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Economist: Chinese history textbooks - The frugality of truth

Chinese history textbooks

The fragility of truth

Oct 8th 2009 | BEIJING
From The Economist print edition

History just ain’t what it used to be

Illustration by Claudio Munoz

SCHOOL textbooks in China have a habit of bending the truth, to suit Communist Party dogma or to reinforce moral messages. Rarely does anyone challenge them. Exams require rote learning, and children are not encouraged to question received wisdom. A group of 20 or so teachers from across China, however, has recently caused a stir by pointing out some mistakes.

Their efforts, widely reported in the official press, have steered clear of politically sensitive issues such as the party’s own record. Indeed the errors they have focused on sound little more than nitpicks. They question, for example, a commonly told tale (not just in China), that Thomas Edison, who was later to invent the light bulb, supposedly helped a doctor illuminate an operation performed on his mother by manipulating candles and mirrors.

In Chinese schools, however, the dividing line between historical fiction and history can easily be confused. Children are often not taught to make a distinction. As a result, students lose the ability to look for and identify mistakes, says Leng Yubin, one of the teachers campaigning for a textbook purge. The press has quoted comparisons of these errors to the adulteration of milk with toxic melamine, which poisoned tens of thousands of infants last year.

China’s prime minister, Wen Jiabao, perhaps unwittingly stirred the debate last month when he visited a Beijing high school. After sitting at the back of a class, he pointed out a mistake. A textbook described the provinces of Shaanxi and Gansu as in north China, whereas they are officially in north-western China. Why, asked one widely circulated commentary, did it take the prime minister to point out such an error? The publishing house reportedly retorted that geographically speaking, north China is correct.

Such brushes with orthodoxy are unlikely to make much headway. Occasional reports have surfaced in the official press in recent years that Mao Zedong did not, contrary to widespread belief, declare on October 1st 1949 in Tiananmen Square that the Chinese people had “stood up”. (He said something like it at a less dramatic ceremony a few days earlier.) But during recent 60th anniversary celebrations of communist China’s founding, several reports in state controlled newspapers revived the old myth.

Another dubious assertion is being visibly perpetuated. The authorities have said that 56 columns erected on Tiananmen Square for the celebrations will stay put. They represent China’s officially recognised 56 “ethnic groups”. It is a number that few Chinese schoolchildren would dare to challenge. Yet when the communists came to power there were found to be more than 400. Officials eventually settled on the much lower figure and suppressed further debate.

Copyright © 2009 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.

ST: Rajaratnam, keeper of the faith

Sep 20, 2009

Rajaratnam, keeper of the faith

The Pledge is the enduring legacy of the late minister, to whom Singapore was worth fighting and dying for

By Irene Ng

Mr Rajaratnam understood the power of language and of ideas. And the idea he loved most was: A Singaporean Singapore where its citizens transcend their boundaries of race, religion and language, and unite to become one people. -- ST FILE PHOTO As any writer knows, first drafts are subject to revision. Good writers hone, sculpt and polish their drafts to make sure that their final versions sparkle. Mr S. Rajaratnam, who drafted Singapore's national Pledge, was a very good writer. Before he joined politics in 1959, he had distinguished himself as an influential newspaper columnist and a short-story writer. He understood the power of language and of ideas. And the idea he loved most was: A Singaporean Singapore where its citizens transcend their boundaries of race, religion and language, and unite to become one people. The Pledge and its origins have been much discussed recently. The subject is of particular interest to me as I am writing Mr Rajaratnam's biography for the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. In the course of my research over the last five years, I have gained a deeper appreciation of how the Pledge came about and why it stands as Mr Rajaratnam's enduring legacy to Singapore. Before the then Foreign Minister put his mind to the wording of the Pledge in 1966, the initial idea, as envisaged by the then Education Minister Ong Pang Boon, was that the Pledge would be recited by students in classrooms and during flag-raising ceremonies. The original idea arose, in fact, as a sort of administrative compromise, given the constraints of schools. It can be traced back to October 1965, shortly after Singapore's separation from Malaysia. The Education Ministry wanted to inculcate national consciousness and patriotism among students in schools by assembling them for a flag-raising ceremony to the strains of the National Anthem. However, the mass singing of the anthem, to be accompanied by a brass band, required a large field or assembly hall. Many schools lacked such facilities. Even those with the facilities could not carry out the flag-raising ceremony daily because of the tight curriculum. In a letter dated Oct 20, 1965, Mr Willie Cheng, the Ministry of Education's principal assistant secretary (administration), proposed that the flag-raising ceremonies be carried out in the classroom instead, where students would salute the flag. In a response dated Oct 22, 1965, Mr Kwan Sai Kheong, acting permanent secretary and director of education, wrote that Mr Ong had suggested, as a compromise, a pledge of two to three lines to be recited in the classroom, in place of singing the national anthem. On that basis, two earlier versions of the Pledge were produced. The first, dated Dec 17, 1965, was by Mr Philip Liau, adviser on textbooks and syllabuses. He used the American Students' Pledge as a reference: 'I pledge (reaffirm) my allegiance (loyalty) to the Flag of Singapore, and to the country for which it stands; one sovereign nation of many freedom-loving people of one heart, one mind and one spirit, dedicated to a just and equal society.' The second version, dated Dec 30, 1965, by Mr George Thomson, director of the Political Study Centre, read: 'I proudly and wholeheartedly pledge my loyalty to our flag of Singapore and to the honour and independence of our Republic whose banner it is. We come from different races, religions and cultures, but we are now united in mind and heart as one nation, and one people, dedicated to build by democratic means a more just and equal society.' Both versions were submitted to Mr Ong on Jan 26, 1966. His senior staff preferred the first version, considering it shorter and less abstract. It was no surprise that Mr Ong then turned to Mr Rajaratnam, a master stylist known for his strong convictions on building a common national identity. In a letter to Mr Rajaratnam dated Feb 2, 1966, Mr Ong asked him for comments on the two versions and for 'whatever amendments you wish to suggest'. By the time Mr Rajaratnam reverted with his earliest draft dated Feb 18, 1966, the Pledge was completely transformed. While the first two versions were all about pledging loyalty to the flag and country, Mr Rajaratnam's was about pledging to shared ideals, to a vision of Singapore that was, to his mind, worth fighting and dying for. And while the first two versions used the personal pronoun 'I', Mr Rajaratnam opted for the collective 'We, as citizens of Singapore'. Defying the evidence before his eyes, he imagined a nation pulsating as one people. Only he would have the boldness to envision a people giving voice to such ideals in unison, declaring their identity as 'citizens of Singapore', as opposed to 'the Malays', 'the Chinese', 'the Indians' and so on. More profoundly, he changed the entire premise for the Pledge as originally conceived by the Education Ministry. It was not just a few lines to be recited to the flag. It was a promise made to oneself, to each other and to future generations. Mr Rajaratnam's earliest draft which we have on record went: 'We, as citizens of Singapore, pledge to forget differences of race, language and religion and become one united people; to build a democratic society where justice and equality will prevail, and where we will seek happiness and progress by helping one another.' When he wrote 'to forget differences of race, language and religion', it was not a call for collective amnesia. He was not enjoining the people to deny their differences. He was calling on them to disregard these differences in their quest for a Singaporean Singapore. As his speeches during that period show, he was not blind to the fact that these differences were deeply rooted. On the contrary, he was all too conscious of their potency after the trauma of the racial riots in 1964 and the Separation in 1965. He was subjected to repeated reminders of the emotive power of appeals to these differences. During the years of merger, he was the strongest advocate for a Malaysian Malaysia, as opposed to a Malay Malaysia. Indeed, it was he who coined the slogan 'Malaysian Malaysia'. What he did not foresee was that Singapore would be expelled. The Separation in 1965 was, as he put it, 'the crushing of my dreams'. 'I believed in one nation, regardless of race and religion. My dreams were shattered,' he said. In the wake of that agonising moment came another test. Shortly after the Separation, a group of Chinese chauvinists, aware that their community now constituted 75 per cent, wanted Chinese language and culture to be the dominant consideration in government policy. Mr Rajaratnam recounted: 'They charged the PAP government with betraying Chinese language and culture. They believed that, in a predominantly Chinese Singapore, where the Chinese had overwhelming strength, the Government could be panicked into opting for Chinese chauvinism.' The minorities, particularly the Malays, were fearful of what Singapore would be like. When Mr Rajaratnam wrote his first draft of the Pledge, asking people to 'forget their differences', it was in the context of such anxious times. Disregard these differences of race, language and religion; do not let them stand in the way of becoming a united people, to the dream of creating a Singaporean Singapore, where justice and equality will prevail. Help one another to seek happiness and progress. Do this regardless of race, language or religion, we are implicitly urged. This ideal permeates many of his speeches on the topic at the time. Indeed, he was the first minister to use the phrase 'unity in diversity' in the 1960s, enjoining people to come together while celebrating the diversity among them. From available records, we can ascertain that the Pledge - as is used today - was finalised in July 1966. There is unfortunately a gap in the historical records on the revisions between Mr Rajaratnam's first draft, dated Feb 18, 1966, and the final one. But knowing how he worked and liked to work, in his days as a journalist as well as a politician, he would have refined it along the way, taking into account various views. As part of this process, he consulted the then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew. According to Mr Lee's recollection, as related in an interview with me, he had pointed out to Mr Rajaratnam that some words sounded too idealistic. Mr Lee also tightened the draft. Unlike the Singapore flag which was discussed in the Cabinet in 1959, there is no record of any discussion in Cabinet on the Pledge. A search of the Cabinet minutes of meetings and papers in 1965 and 1966 revealed nothing on it. From this and available records, one can conclude that the final version was firmed up between individual ministers with input from Ministry of Education officials. There is no doubt in my mind, however, that the final words, spirit and sentiments of the Pledge owed much to Mr Rajaratnam. Mr Lee rightly described him as 'a great idealist'. He was also a great visionary. Without such qualities, the Pledge would not have been the imaginative leap that it was. He had great faith in the power of the human will to overcome the differences of race, language, and religion, and to transform the separate communities into a nation. After Mr Rajaratnam left the Cabinet in 1988, he became concerned with policies which appeared to encourage Singaporeans to assert their communal identities. In 1990, he spoke up against what he perceived as a dangerous form of Chinese self-assertion in the Speak Mandarin campaign. While making clear that he supported the campaign just as he would for others encouraging people to speak 'Malay, Tamil, French, Japanese, or even better English', he took issue with the campaign's slogan 'if you are Chinese, make a statement - in Mandarin'. This, for the nervous minorities, would carry the subliminal message that the Chinese are different, he warned. Had he been asked, he would have suggested this slogan instead: 'Make a Singaporean statement in Mandarin.' Such episodes underscored the importance of Mr Rajaratnam's role as the keeper of the faith, a role which few others could play with equal conviction. He became an institution as a protector of the vision in the national Pledge - his enduring legacy to Singapore. The writer is a Member of Parliament and writer-in-residence at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (Iseas). The first volume of Mr S. Rajaratnam's two-part biography will be published by Iseas by early next year.

Copyright © 2007 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved. Privacy Statement & Condition of Access

ST: Present about the past - Singapore

Present about the past

Sep 19, 2009

Curator Lim Chen Sian (left) used reverse chronology to display the maps and artefacts, some of which came from collector Lim Shao Bin (right). -- ST PHOTOS: SAMUEL HE Spy maps and artefacts of secret meetings and espionage chart aspects of Singapore's history

By deepika shetty

An exhibition now on at the National Library Building charts some little-known aspects of Singapore's history, including Japanese spy plans for invading Singapore as early as 1910. The show, Vignettes In Time: Singapore Maps And History Through The Centuries, has over 130 maps and artefacts, including the very first image of Singapore, consisting of sketches done in 1819. The sketches have never been seen in public before. The display captures the Singapore story, where people can look up the location of long-gone kampungs and school sites, for example, and marvel at modern Singapore as an urban wonder. It also represents a personal journey for Mr Lim Shao Bin, 52, a private collector who contributed to the exhibition. Mr Lim, who is a director of computer information systems at a multinational firm, provided about 60 maps and artefacts that give rare insights into Japanese espionage activities well before World War II, including reports of clandestine meetings and a spy chief's diary. They are displayed with maps from the collection of the National Library, which jointly organised the exhibition with the Singapore Heritage Society. Mr Lim started his collection as a way to understand his own past. He says: 'My grandfather was killed by Japanese soldiers in 1945. In 1980, I went to Japan on a scholarship. There were many questions troubling me: When exactly did the war start and why did it start? Could it have been avoided? 'I was searching for answers to some painful questions.' This journey led him to Kanda, a street in Tokyo known for its rich historical material. It was there that he started his collection of Japanese publications, maps and photographs relating to Singapore and Asia, starting from the Meiji period in the 1860s. Over the past 29 years since his visit to Kanda, his collection has grown to more than 1,000 artefacts, including photos, maps and books. He says: 'To understand the present, we have to look into the past.' One aspect of the exhibition that will strike visitors today is how the maps show that since independence, Singapore has increased its physical land mass by 25 per cent. In 1965, the island measured about 600 sq km. It is now 770 sq km. Visitors will discover that the creation of land from the sea or swamps can be traced back to 1822 when Sir Stamford Raffles removed a small hillock near the mouth of Singapore River to fill in the swamp land that is today named Raffles Square. The colonial government later expanded the waterfront districts of the Esplanade, Telok Ayer and Tanjong Pagar. The post-Independence period saw reclamation efforts proceed at a fast pace and this can be seen by how maps show ever-expanding boundaries. Another interesting aspect of the exhibition is that curator Lim Chen Sian uses reverse chronology to display the maps. He starts the exhibition with the growth of modern Singapore from 1965 to the present, before stepping back in time to track the post-war aftermath from 1945 to 1965, and before that, the rise and fall of what he calls 'a gilded age' from 1900 to 1945, and then goes back to Singapore's earlier origins from 1819 to 1900. He says: 'I wanted people to be comfortable with what they know now. Once you have got them in the comfort zone, it is easier to pull them back into the past. 'By the time you get to the end of this exhibition, you realise that Singapore first figured on maritime charts as early as the 17th century.' Mr Lim, 34, who is a trained archaeologist, says if visitors start searching for their old schools and old neighbourhoods in these maps, the exhibition would have served its purpose. He says: 'This was our world before Google maps. Creating a map took so much effort. It told so many stories. I hope when people walk out of here, they will be thinking of some of those stories.' deepikas@sph.com.sg view it VIGNETTES IN TIME: SINGAPORE MAPS AND HISTORY THROUGH THE CENTURIES Where: Exhibition area, Level 10, National Library Building When: Till Nov 18, 10am to 9pm (closed on public holidays) Admission: Free Info: Go to www.nl.sg or call 6332-3255 PUBLIC TOURS English: Today, Sept 26 and Oct 31, 3 to 4pm Chinese: Oct 3 and Oct 24, 3 to 4pm SCHOOL TOURS (in English only) Every Tues, 10.30 to 11.30am, Every Thurs, 3 to 4pm (no tours on public holidays) To book, call 6333-7995 or register online at http://golibrary.nlb.gov.sg. Tours are free, but you need to register as numbers are limited. Japanese maps and photographs plot the future A deceptively simple-looking, no-frills book with a plain beige cover, together with this map, was actually a pocket-size pictorial guide for invading Japanese troops. The map indicates 83 buildings marked in red, which were targets. They included the Singapore General Hospital, the Singapore Civil Airport, the Special Branch Headquarters, the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, the Singapore Swimming Club and the Raffles Museum. Geological map of Singapore This tracks the growth of modern Singapore from 1965 to the present. For an island of its size, its geological constitution is surprisingly complex. Almost 50 per cent of the island is granite rock, shown in the area shaded red. The yellow areas indicate a high alluvium content. Alluvium comprises materials such as fine particles of silt and clay and larger particles of sand and gravel, showing reclaimed land. The earliest images of Singapore, 1819 Shown for the first time in public are two sketches of Singapore dated February and April 1819. These are believed to predate all previously known images of Singapore.

Copyright © 2007 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved. Privacy Statement & Condition of Access

ST: Past in posters

Past in posters

Excerpt: The show, Coping With Vulnerability: The First 50 Years. Posters From Our Past, will be a merry trip down memory lane for many, but in its own graphic way charts five decades of self-governance and the changes in society along the way. COPING WITH VULNERABILITY: THE FIRST 50 YEARS. POSTERS FROM OUR PAST Where: Basement 1, National Library Building, 100 Victoria Street When: Till Oct 15, 10am to 9pm daily (closed on public holidays) Info: www.mysingapore.sg === Sep 12, 2009

The nation's growth through 50 years of public education posters is on show at the National Library

By deepika shetty

Singapore's story has been told in books, films, photographs and maps. Get set for a new way of framing its history: through posters. If you Stopped At Two, or actually did cut your long hair, or still think of a camel when you save water, it is due to the influence of public education posters over the years. Now, these posters with their quaint pictures and earnest messages are, for the first time, the subject of a free exhibition that opened last week at the National Library Building. The show, Coping With Vulnerability: The First 50 Years. Posters From Our Past, will be a merry trip down memory lane for many, but in its own graphic way charts five decades of self-governance and the changes in society along the way. About 300 posters produced by the Government and its agencies make up the show, organised by the National Resilience Division of the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts and the National Archives of Singapore. A 'poster boy' for the impact the posters had on society is musician Jatt Ali, 53. The Long Hair poster with the tag line: Males With Long Hair Will Be Attended To Last, has some hair-raising memories for him. The authorities at that time associated people with long hair with hippies and drug addicts. Jatt tells Life!: 'This is from the 1970s. I had long hair and each time I went to the post office, I was served last. People took these posters seriously. 'Once I was even picked up during a police ambush in the Peninsula Plaza area and ended up missing the show I was meant to perform at. Together with 20 other long-haired boys my age, I was locked up for 12 hours. My parents made a lot of noise after that and kept asking me to cut my hair, but I never did it.' Arts impresario Robert Liew, 60, too, recalls the poster. He says: 'We equated long hair with individualism. The Government equated it with undesirable Western influence, primarily drug consumption. 'There was a fair amount of consternation, but before things came to head, no pun intended, it was all over, the drug threat abated and the length of one's hair returned to the domain of fashion.' Sociologist Paulin Tay Straughan, 46, points out that beyond the obvious and in-your-face messages, these posters tell an important story. 'My mother was a nurse in the Family Planning Department and I pretty much grew up with the Stop At Two message. Things were so much simpler then. The fact that we have to use fancy effects, new media and phrase our messages cleverly now shows how far we have advanced as a nation.' History lesson She adds: 'I know some of these posters seem like a real blast from the past and are extremely amusing. But they also show how Singaporeans did not question as much in the early days. Having survived the war, all people wanted was stability. They had full faith in their lawmakers and there was no cynicism.' The trials and tribulations of the early days Dr Straughan refers to is something the exhibition organisers want viewers to reflect on. Supplementing the posters are news clippings, archival photographs and illustrations. The exhibition is divided into four sections with an introduction showcasing how different countries and governments employ posters as a simple and effective means of communication. From there, its three sections touch on issues of Water, Public Health and Internal/ External Threats. Collectively, these posters explore the many challenges Singapore has faced over the years, from communism to communalism, the lack of water resources, exposure to infectious diseases and transnational terrorism post 9/11. Dr K. Unnikrishna Menon, 59, director of the ministry's National Resilience Division, calls the exhibition a 'logical progression'. Two years ago, the ministry organised an exhibition on Infectious Diseases, Past, Present And Future to educate Singaporeans on the threat of pandemics such as Sars and avian flu. Before that was another exhibition, The Changing Faces Of Terrorism. Dr Menon says of the latest show: 'The idea is to get people to pause and reflect and ponder on the eventful journey of 50 years, and the amazing advances we have made. So many Singaporeans take these for granted. 'The posters serve as visual records of our culture and evolution.' Artist and curator Alan Oei, 33, who is working on a project based on posters in the 1970s, says the show reflects a significant part of Singapore's history. He says: 'Sometimes you wonder why Singaporeans expect the Government to do everything for them, and here you have the answer - because we have always been told what to do and what values to aspire to. 'I grew up with lots of posters, which were more campaigns than simple messages. There are still plenty of campaigns, but the messages have become a lot more sophisticated and subtle. The in-your-face kind of approach is gone.' deepikas@sph.com.sg

=== 1970S CONCERNS MALES WITH LONG HAIR WILL BE ATTENDED TO LAST Iconic. It bluntly spells out the official stand on long hair. Men with long hair would be served last. You can laugh about it now, but things were dead serious then. Apart from being served last, male artists with long hair were not allowed to appear on television. TWO IS ENOUGH In 1966, the National Family Planning Campaign was launched and the Government embarked on a Stop-At-Two policy with the slogan: Girl Or Boy - Two Is Enough. The Government feared that unchecked population growth could strain the country's limited resources. At the same time, Singaporeans preferred boys. This Two-Girl poster, as it was called, was meant to highlight that two children, of either sex, were enough. WATER ISSUES SAVE WATER (undated) A camel grins and bears the message of water conservation. It is simple, it is sweet and it drives the point home. CHILD IN A PAIL POSTER (1980s) Things become a little more subtle. A child in a pail raises issues about water conservation. SECURITY ISSUES PROTECTING SINGAPORE DAY AND NIGHT (1983) OUR ARMED FORCES. BECAUSE A GENERATION'S EFFORTS CAN BE WIPED OUT IN DAYS (1983) Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. These posters produced by the Singapore Armed Forces and the Ministry of Home Affairs drive home the point. WHAT WILL YOU DEFEND? (2009) Slick look and a clever question. Produced by NEXUS (Mindef) as part of the Total Defence Campaign, this latest in the line shows how posters and their underlying messages have evolved over the last 50 years. PUBLIC HEALTH STOP THE HORROR WITH SOAP AND WATER (2009) Produced by the Health Promotion Board, there were complaints when these hard-hitting posters were put up at some bus shelters near primary schools. The board removed the posters and explained that its research had shown that people did not cite handwashing as a way to protect themselves from flu. This poster aimed to show how germs can be present on hands and that handwashing with soap and water would reduce their number - and the likelihood of serious infections.

Copyright © 2007 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved. Privacy Statement & Condition of Access

ST: The making of Men In White (People's Action Party)

Aug 29, 2009

The making of Men In White

A new book on the People's Action Party took three senior journalists more than five years to complete. Backed by four researchers, they conducted 300 interviews and pored over 60 years of press and government records for the 692-page book. Insight finds out about the challenges they faced, what they did to overcome them, and how they put Men In White together.

By Zakir Hussain

The book, which has a print run of 30,000, will be available at leading bookstores after the launch on Sept 8 at $39.90 a copy before GST. THE man was a key player in the formative years of the People's Action Party (PAP). He had been with the party almost from the start and was privy to many of its goings-on. So it was natural that Straits Times writers Sonny Yap, Richard Lim and Leong Weng Kam identified him as a key player they must interview when they started work on a book on the PAP. Unfortunately, the retired politician was known for being reticent and guarded, and for keeping his views to himself since he left politics in the 1980s. The team's initial overtures were rebuffed. It took more than six months of effort before he agreed to speak, Mr Yap, 59, tells Insight. Every now and then, the writers would call up a contact who knew him personally, and the reply would be that he was still pondering over it. Then one day, they had a lucky break. He asked for their list of questions. But it was followed by months of silence. 'In the meantime, whenever we interviewed or met anyone who knew the subject, we would ask them to intercede on our behalf, to convince him that we had no hidden agenda, that the book was not another exercise in PAP propaganda, that we would be fair, objective and balanced,' says Mr Yap. Finally, one night, a contact called to say the subject would like to meet Mr Yap for lunch. That was the breakthrough. 'It was a getting-to-know-you session in which I tried my best to win his confidence,' recalls Mr Yap. 'After that, the first interview was arranged, and we went on for three more interviews and several lunch discussions where he warmly opened up on his role in the PAP. Thanks to his inputs, Men In White is so much more complete, balanced and richer,' he says. Persuaded by Goh Chok Tong IT WAS not just that key player - plus many others who played a part in the PAP's colourful past - who needed to be cajoled, convinced and won over. Mr Yap himself had to be persuaded - by then-Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong - to work on the book. He had said no when asked by then-Straits Times editor Leslie Fong. 'I didn't want to wind up my journalistic career by doing a PAP propaganda book,' says Mr Yap, who has more than 30 years of experience in journalism. He was with New Nation, the defunct afternoon tabloid, from 1971 to 1982, before moving to The Straits Times. Over tea at the Istana, Mr Goh assured him the book would be a Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) publication, and was meant to fill a void in Singapore's history for the younger generation. 'He assured me I would have editorial autonomy over the project, and the PAP would be involved only in rendering research assistance,' recounts Mr Yap. He said yes. Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew also repeatedly stressed to the writers throughout the book project, when they interviewed him, that the book was their version of the PAP story, and not the party's. 'Indeed, confidence-building and convincing people that the book was not PAP propaganda were the prerequisites to clinching many of the interviews,' Mr Yap tells Insight. 'Whether they were former PAP or non-PAP players, we knew we had to overcome their initial reactions of scepticism, if not cynicism, doubt, suspicion, belligerence and, occasionally, outright hostility.' Several former PAP politicians, who were still embittered over how they were unceremoniously dropped, said it was pointless to talk about the past and that they wanted to move on. One former PAP stalwart, who helped to rebuild the party during the big split of 1961, slammed down the phone on the writers, saying he had nothing more to do with the party. In 1961, leftist elements broke away from the party and formed Barisan Sosialis. They included 35 out of 51 branches, and 19 out of 23 branch secretaries. There were also former party members who gave scraps of information on the phone, and said they would give a fuller account when they met the writers. But they never responded again to them. Some agreed to an interview but did not turn up at the arranged time and place. Others were extremely cautious, and insisted that every quote used in the book had to be checked back with them. Getting former leftists to agree to interviews was even more challenging, says Mr Yap. 'They assumed that we were engaged in yet another exercise to deify the PAP and demonise the opposition.' Some asked the writers: 'Do you know we had been detained by the PAP Government for many years? Why should we help you do a book on the PAP?' Others asked if the writers were intelligence agents trying to pry more information out of them to use against them. Some demanded to know whether the team would print what they said. 'Some questioned our questions, some questioned the premises underpinning our questions,' recalls Mr Yap. 'How do you define a communist?' and 'Why do you describe so-and-so as a leftist?' were but two questions they encountered. Yet others took issue with the writers' knowledge and ability to do the book. Mr Yap remembers being ushered into the home of a former Barisan Sosialis official, who gestured to a long table with books on Marx, Engels and Lenin, rows of Hansard volumes which carried the verbatim proceedings of legislative assembly sessions in the 1960s, and stacks of speeches and documents. Seeking out former leftists 'HE SAID rather sternly, 'You can't possibly be qualified to write the PAP story until you have read all these. If you don't read them, how can you grasp the context of my replies to your questions?'' Mr Yap recounts the conversation. Another former prominent leftist and political detainee grilled him for 45 minutes before beginning the interview. It turns out he wanted to check Mr Yap's knowledge of Singapore politics and discern his leanings and biases. The interviewee said he had dumped every book on the PAP into the dustbin because whenever he gave interviews to the authors, he found the information given was used to vilify him and the leftist movement. Mr Leong, 55, was also able to draw out former Mandarin-speaking leftists in Singapore and abroad, with his command of the Chinese language. A big help was a series of articles on former politicians from the early years, he says. Called Life After Politics, the series was done shortly before he started on the book. For the series, Mr Leong spoke to a number of former leftists and won their trust and confidence with his balanced portrayals of their life experiences. Many of them put in a good word for him and helped him locate several left-wing leaders of the PAP who had either quietly retired here or had fled Singapore in the 1950s and 1960s. 'Often, one interview would lead to another,' he recalls. Slowly, insights unfolded on key developments in the party's history, like the plots by leftists to seize control. Former Barisan Sosialis leader Fong Swee Suan gave the team the names of people who were deported and are now living in Hong Kong. Mr Leong also spent a week tracking down and interviewing former leftists and members of the Malayan Communist Party in the peace villages in southern Thailand. He travelled with Straits Times executive photographer Wong Kwai Chow, 56. The interviews were an eye-opener, he says. The experience of a key leftist in exile there, Mr Chan Sun Wing, a former top aide to Mr Lee Kuan Yew, forms the prologue of the book. Mr Leong also met former teenage Chinese schoolgirls in pigtails, who were part of the leftist movement here. 'After more than 50 years, those I met in 2003 were frail (some could hardly walk), and in their 60s and 70s. 'One of them told me she was the daughter of a rich businessman in Singapore, living in a big mansion with servants at home and ate very good food every day. But she gave up all that to join the leftist movement, and went underground when security officers were after her,' he recounts. She, with many others, escaped to Indonesia and later joined her compatriots as armed guerillas in jungles along the Malaysian-Thai border. Says Mr Leong: 'They were young and innocent and idealistic, and for that they paid a very high price. 'To this day, they do not think it was wrong,' he adds. Mr Cheong Yip Seng, former editor-in-chief of SPH's English and Malay Newspapers Division, who oversaw much of the work on the book, says he was very pleased that many of the left-wing leaders agreed, some after much persuasion, to be interviewed. 'Nobody has told a non-partisan story of the PAP. It was long overdue,' he says. 'Here was a chance to get a version of the history from the defeated faction of the PAP, the radical left who came so close to winning. If we did not reach out to them, their voices would have been suppressed forever,' he adds. 'By any yardstick, it was a gripping tale. I had lived through part of that history as a journalist and know it had all the ingredients of a thriller,' he says. Mr Cheong also sees the book as a way to reach out to younger Singaporeans. 'My sense is that they have only a vague idea of how Singapore got here,' he adds. The book began life in two parts. Mr Yap and Mr Leong worked on telling the story of the party's early years, while Mr Lim explained how the party consolidated its hold on Singapore. As the book neared completion, they decided to add a third part to examine the party's longevity. 'I was sad we were not able to reach a few, including Mr Lim Chin Siong. He had died before we started,' says Mr Cheong. Mr Fang Chuang Pi, who led the communist underground in Singapore at the time, died in Hat Yai, Thailand, in 2004 before the team could reach him. Ong Eng Guan stays mum THERE were also a handful of party stalwarts who resolutely declined to be interviewed. Among them was the first mayor of Singapore, Mr Ong Eng Guan. Mr Leong visited his office to speak to him, and managed only to put in a word with his wife who said she would get him to call back. He never did. Many key players, however, shared their stories willingly, and extended their help and assistance in recommending and persuading former comrades to speak. They helped the writers to get in touch with past players lost in the mist of time, and gave them access to their memorabilia. 'At their age, they knew that if they didn't give their side of the story, it would pass into eternal oblivion,' notes Mr Yap. But one major challenge was that many of the subjects interviewed were in their 70s, 80s and even 90s. Their memories were fading, if not failing. As a result, the writers had to fill in the blanks and counter-check what the subjects said against other accounts and research. 'Often, we had to jolt their memories. Some asked for newspaper clippings to help them refresh their memories,' recalls Mr Yap. 'We were often confronted with conflicting and contradictory accounts, and trying to reconcile them posed a tremendous challenge for the team.' They had to cross-check recollections and details with other interviews, news reports and records. But notes of their early eventful meetings could not be located with any of the founding members or with the party headquarters. The notes could have been destroyed to avoid them falling into the hands of the Special Branch, misplaced when the party headquarters moved, or taken away by defectors when the party split. The lack of records left the writers, in some cases, with no way of ascertaining whose version was right, such as how the founders came up with the party logo. So, they opted to reflect the various individuals' views on the matter and left it at that. Still, the authors say the book would have been harder to write if it were done, say, 10 years earlier. In this case, the distance of time helped. 'Former leftists may not have opened up earlier,' says Mr Leong. Even as the writers were busy arranging interviews, the team of researchers led by former Straits Times journalist Leong Ching, 40, was hard at work. They trawled the National Archives and the archives of unions and universities, tracked down people the writers wanted to interview, and hunted down odd pieces of information for close to four years. They also combed through Malay- and Chinese-language newspapers which reported on the PAP's internal struggles. Others on the research team were Ms Goh Sue Lin and Ms Tan Mui Ling, both 29, graduates from the National University of Singapore who also helped to provide translations of Chinese reports. Veteran journalist Sia Boon So, who is fluent in English, Chinese and Malay, was also on the team and translated many Malay newspaper reports. Berita Harian and Tamil Murasu journalists also helped in explaining Malay and Tamil materials. Ms Leong notes that there were some disappointments - such as when the families of key players declined to give the team access to their taped interviews deposited with the National Archives. As a younger Singaporean, she felt that the climate of political awakening in the 1950s and 1960s made the process of research exciting. 'I spent hours in the dark halls of the oral history department, listening to the voices and reading the transcripts of men long dead, describing their dreams and passions, and their version of what happened,' she says. 'Politics in those days was literally a matter of life and death - and many lost their lives in the struggle,' she says. Ms Leong, a PhD candidate at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, adds: 'It has been said that history is written by the victors. Actually, in the course of doing the research for this book, I realise that history is written by those who take the trouble and have the resources and the will to strive for a more perfect understanding. 'Working towards providing a complete version of history is not possible, but I believe the resources SPH put into this book make this as close as possible to any historically accurate version now or in future,' she says. Ms Leong notes that while the early years of the party were rich in stories, its later years were nearer what people would treasure and remember. 'What makes a good story doesn't always make good public policy,' she quips. Changes after 1984 election MR LIM, 60, admits he had an easier task persuading people to talk, as many PAP leaders and MPs were forthcoming. PAP ministers, in particular MM Lee, Senior Minister Goh and Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong gave a considerable amount of their time in several interviews with the writers. Mr Lim worked on the chapters which looked at the years when the party was firmly in control. At times, politicians shared bits of information that had never been made public. The challenge, he notes, was trying to make the narrative nearly as exciting as the chapters on the party's early years. It helped that the party gave him access to its confidential post-mortem report of the 1984 General Election, which marked a turning point in the PAP's post-independence history. 'It was a no-holds-barred report,' says Mr Lim, who saw in it a blueprint for the PAP's subsequent direction towards a more consultative style. At that election, the PAP saw a steep plunge in support: It garnered 64.8 per cent of the vote, a plunge of 12.8 per cent from the 1980 election. Two opposition candidates - Mr J.B. Jeyaretnam in Anson and Mr Chiam See Tong in Potong Pasir - were victorious and the PAP lost the political dominance it had enjoyed since 1968. 'We tempted fate,' the party said in the report, which was made public for the first time for the book. 'Had it not been for the tremendous depth of support which PAP enjoyed, we would have been voted out of office,' it said. The Government had rolled out one controversial policy after another in that election year - from steps to favour graduate mothers to a report that proposed raising the retirement age from 55 to 60, then 65 and consequently pushing back the age when people could withdraw their Central Provident Fund savings. The post-mortem was put together by a team set up by then-assistant secretary-general Goh Chok Tong, and chaired by Mr Ong Teng Cheong who went on to become second deputy prime minister and elected president. The report was written up by Mr Lee Hsien Loong, who was a first-time candidate. It made recommendations on what the party should do to rebuild the support it had enjoyed, and these proposals were reflected in many of the changes to the PAP's style in the late 1980s to early 1990s. The party had to revamp its image, engage people emotionally, and stop harping on the quality of its candidates as this reinforced the perception that its super-achievers were too removed from the ground. But it also had to accept that 'the opposition is here to stay' - and the party should try to maintain a large and stable majority rather than eliminate the opposition altogether. 'Instant rapport' with white outfits AS THE interviews progressed, Straits Times verbatim reporters Gavin Chua, Simon Tan and Serene Ng rendered the taped voices, accents and intonations into ready-to-use transcripts. Over several years, they produced hundreds of transcripts. The writers decided to use their reportorial techniques and go for a 'voices approach'. They would speak to as many people as possible who were involved in the PAP and reflect their views and versions of events. Mr Yap and Mr Leong worked on telling the story of the party's early years, while Mr Lim would narrate the later years and explain how the party consolidated its position. By August 2006, drafts for these two parts of the book were completed and ready to go, but Mr Cheong decided to bring the story up to date by including recent developments, including the general election that year. A decision was made to do a second book on PAP governance - to trace the origins, evolution and implementation of the key principles underpinning the party's rule of Singapore. But this idea was scrapped, and replaced by a third part on PAP governance and survival. At the same time, updates and revisions were made to the earlier parts, and the writers had to do their own research. They also settled on Men In White as the title. Mr Yap recounts how at the PAP's inauguration at Victoria Memorial Hall on Nov 21, 1954, many members of the audience were taken aback by the sight of the party's founding members and convenors striding onstage in white open-necked shirts and cotton trousers. They had expected to see them in ties and suits. 'That struck an instant rapport with the people, as one interviewee told me,' he says, adding that the party whites have since been a defining element of the PAP till today. The drafts were completed late last year, and the final okay was given for each and every page in June before the book went to press this month. Mr Cheong, who guided the team, was glad the writers produced many gripping inside stories. 'The PAP was also generous with its time, and their leaders spent many hours with the team,' he adds. Says the book's editor, Ms Lee Mei Lin of publishing company Marshall Cavendish which was involved in the production and design of the book: 'Editing the book was worth every minute because there was new information to read about and much to discover all over again.' Says Straits Times editor Han Fook Kwang: 'It wasn't difficult supervising this project. 'The material was compelling and the writers were very seasoned. My job was to move the project along, make sure there were no large gaps in the story and act as a sounding board for the writers to bounce off their ideas.' Adds Mr Han: 'We usually think of the PAP in organisational terms, how effective it is as a party and what its ideology was. 'But if you read the book, you'll find that it's mainly about people who believed in what they were fighting for - both for and against the PAP leadership - and were not afraid to step forward because they wanted a better future for Singapore.' The writers captured this spirit, and the process of chronicling it is best reflected in their acknowledgements in the book. They said: 'It was indeed the ride of a lifetime.' zakirh@sph.com.sg

===

A TALE FROM DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE 'Nobody has told a non-partisan story of the PAP. It was long overdue. Here was a chance to get a version of the history from the defeated faction of the PAP, the radical left who came so close to winning. If we did not reach out to them, their voices would have been suppressed forever. By any yardstick, it was a gripping tale. I had lived through part of that history as a journalist and know it had all the ingredients of a thriller.' Mr Cheong Yip Seng (above), former editor-in-chief of SPH's English and Malay Newspapers Division Copyright © 2007 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved. Privacy Statement & Condition of Access

ST: Natural history, a common heritage

Natural history, a common heritage

Aug 22, 2009

Exhibition at Botanic Gardens showcases the region's rich biodiversity

By Chin See Chung

The Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research houses one of the world's largest collections of South-east Asian species. The museum is located on the National University of Singapore campus. -- ST PHOTO: JOYCE FANG THE profusion and diversity of life forms, geological features and the human cultures that they encountered in their travels were the keys that stimulated the intellectual processes of both Charles Darwin and his Victorian compatriot, Alfred Russel Wallace. They both searched for a mechanism to explain long-term organic change. Darwin spent almost five years circumnavigating the globe, observing, documenting and thinking about his ideas on evolution. He explored coastal areas of both sides of South America, visited the Galapagos and crossed the Pacific landing at Tahiti, New Zealand and Australia before returning via the Indian and Atlantic oceans. Wallace, on the other hand, spent four years in the Amazon, exploring, collecting and documenting. He unfortunately lost almost everything he collected in a fire while sailing back. He then spent eight years on a great number of islands in the Malay Archipelago, where he amassed a treasure trove of more than 125,000 natural history specimens. Wallace and Darwin were greatly influenced by the intellectuals of the time and the growing momentum of scientific thought, seeking alternatives to the Church's thinking on the origin of life. French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, as early as 1809 in his Philosophie Zoologique, proposed a theory to explain natural change. Central to his thesis is that traits acquired during an individual's lifetime could be passed on to its offspring. Though since discredited, this was part of the growing body of thinking on the subject. By 1840, a clear picture of the fossil record had emerged. There was indisputable evidence that there is a progression from the primitive invertebrates to the fish, reptiles and finally mammals, with many going extinct and others appearing. Creation in a single period, 'in the beginning', did not seem tenable. Charles Lyell's three-volume book, Principles Of Geology (1830-1833), one of the most important scientific books of the 19th century, outlined the geological forces that shaped the Earth over vast periods of time. It challenged prevailing thinking that the Earth was shaped by supernatural events, such as Noah's flood. In the anonymously published 1844 book, Vestiges Of The Natural History Of Creation, (actually by Robert Chambers), was the audacious suggestion that humans had emerged from lowly animals, albeit by divine design. While this book offended, it did not offer a biological mechanism for change. Another influential book was An Essay On The Principle Of Population, by Reverend Thomas Malthus, first published anonymously in 1798. Malthus had postulated that population growth would always exceed the growth of food supply, leading to hunger, disease and a struggle for survival resulting in a situation that would limit population growth. Malthus' idea of 'struggle for survival' directly influenced both Wallace and Darwin. While it appeared to have directed Darwin's thinking towards the theory of natural selection, it was the trigger that crystallised Wallace's thoughts. In February 1858, after four years of exploring the Malay Archipelago, Wallace was sick with malaria in the Maluku islands, east of Sulawesi, and was thinking about the ideas of Malthus. He suddenly linked this to a mechanism that would ensure long-term organic change. This was the concept of 'variation and the survival of the fittest'. Individuals that are better adapted would have a better chance of surviving. This is the process of 'natural selection'. It was the fundamental process leading to the origin of new species. Wallace immediately drafted a paper and wrote to Darwin with his ideas. Darwin had explored the same theories for 20 years and was writing a book on this subject but had not publicly presented his thoughts. He was advised to present Wallace's paper together with his own at the next meeting of the Linnaean Society, the world's oldest biological society, in London on July 1, 1858. He was also forced to prepare his book for publication. This book that changed the world, On The Origin Of Species, was published in November 1859, 150 years ago. The theory of natural selection remained controversial throughout the rest of the 19th century. It was only in the early 20th century, when Mendelian genetics was able to explain the inheritance of specific traits that rendered certain organisms 'fitter' and thus 'selected' to replace the unfit, that acceptance became widespread. In 1869, Wallace published his book, The Malay Archipelago, one of the greatest natural history travel books of the 19th century. His travels gave birth to his ideas on the theory of evolution. And he made significant contributions to biogeography when he linked the geographical distribution of animals and plants to the regions' geological history. While in Singapore, Wallace explored Bukit Timah and, in two months, caught 700 species of beetles. The incredible productivity of Bukit Timah is an illustration that we live in a region with one of the richest biodiversities in the world. It is a diversity that the Botanic Gardens was designed to celebrate in all its manifestations. This year we are holding special events to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Gardens, which shares the same anniversary with the publication of On The Origin Of Species, Darwin's 200th birth anniversary and the 140th anniversary of Wallace's book, The Malay Archipelago. It is therefore apt that the Gardens has staged an exhibition on Wallace and Darwin. 'Two Minds One Theory' illustrates the region's rich biodiversity and the beauty of natural life, and tells the story of the theory of evolution, to generate awareness and interest in biodiversity and inspire an ethos for conservation. Natural history unlocked the door to the evolutionary theory. In Singapore, the Raffles Museum, built in 1887, was the repository of some of these records. It was an institution of magnificent displays on zoology and ethnography and a centre of scholarship, especially before the World War II years. It was one of the few institutions in Singapore protected when so much was destroyed during the war. The museum's collections were dismantled in 1969 and its collections dispersed. The single most outstanding exhibit was the skeleton of a blue whale which, if I remember correctly as a child, hung over the grand main staircase. Exhibited since 1903, this national icon etched itself into the memories of generations of Singaporeans. Ms Lee Chor Lin, the director of the National Museum, wrote in 2007 that the memory of the whale lived on even for people born after the whale's departure from the museum. Today, what remains is largely hidden in storage vaults awaiting permanent public airing. Natural history, the organisms from the different evolutionary stages and the evolutionary processes are our common heritage. It is a heritage that children, with their imagination unfettered by cultural norms and artefacts, instinctively identify with. They would love to be let loose in such a museum in all its glory. The writer is the director of Singapore Botanic Gardens

Copyright © 2007 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved. Privacy Statement & Condition of Access

FT: The history of the Times New Roman typeface

The history of the Times New Roman typeface

By Joel Alas

Published: August 1 2009 01:56 | Last updated: August 1 2009 02:01

A leading authority on type, Mike Parker is convinced that William Starling Burgess created the font we now know as Times New Roman

In his apartment overlooking the fishing docks of Portland, Maine, Mike Parker was putting the final touches to a font, thinning a few obstinate serifs and thickening some delicate stems. The typeface he was working on was instantly recognisable, even to those with no interest in letterform. It looked just like Times New Roman. Yet on Parker’s sample sheet it was marked by a different name. “I call it Starling, after the man who originally drew it,” he said.

The release of Starling in June presented not just a new font, but a challenge to the accepted history of one of the most widely used typefaces in the world. And after a lifetime spent in typography, Parker was well aware of the controversy he was getting involved in: typography may present a genteel exterior, but it’s an art form punctuated by bitter rivalries and rampant plagiarism.

EDITOR’S CHOICE

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The case that Parker makes about the real origins of Times New Roman stands on narrow foundations. The sole piece of surviving evidence for his version of history is a brass pattern plate bearing a large capital letter B. He holds the plate up to show the familiar form of the letter, its characteristic curves and serifs. The point, he says, is that such pattern plates represent a technology that was not used after 1915. The creation of Times New Roman was announced in 1932.

Eighty-year-old Parker is one of the world’s leading experts on type. As the head of typographic development at the once-formidable Mergenthaler Linotype company in New York from the 1950s to the 1970s, he had enormous influence over the fonts available to the American public. It was his decision to introduce Helvetica to the Linotype library, creating a design legacy still evident today. But ever since he received an invitation in the early 1990s to view some interesting archival material, Parker’s time has been consumed by the hunt to solve a mystery.

The invitation came from the late Gerald Giampa, an eccentric Canadian master printer who, in 1987, purchased the remnants of the Lanston Monotype company. Giampa delved into the company’s archive, where he claimed to have unearthed documents that refer to a typeface known only as Number 54 – the font, Parker says, that we now know as Times New Roman. Except that these documents dated from 1904, and bore the name of a different designer: William Starling Burgess.

“Gerald sent me some pattern plates and said, ‘Do these look familiar?’” Parker said. “I said ‘yes, they’re Times Roman.’ He said, ‘No, they’re much earlier than that.’”

William Starling Burgess was born into a wealthy Boston family in 1878, and is best remembered as an accomplished naval and aeronautical designer, the builder of yachts for the America’s Cup and aircraft for the Wright brothers. But before embarking on his stellar career on wind and water, Parker believes Burgess had a short but brilliant dalliance with typography.

William Starling Burgess

When Giampa started investigating the Lanston Monotype archives, he claimed to have found correspondence between the company and Burgess, who, in 1904, ordered the manufacture of a font series to be used for company documents at his shipyard in Marblehead, Massachusetts. But before Lanston Monotype could complete the order, Giampa claimed, Burgess witnessed an early flight by the Wright brothers and abandoned his interest in type in favour of aviation. His original drawings were filed at the company as Number 54, and remained on a shelf for years.

Parker says that in 1921 Lanston Monotype tried unsuccessfully to sell the Number 54 font to a fledgling news magazine called Time. Sometime after that, Burgess’s drawings fell into the hands of Stanley Morison, a type consultant at the Monotype Corporation in Britain, by way of Frank Hinman Pierpont, an American who managed that company’s factory in Surrey and who made a career out of reviving old fonts.

In the early 1900s typography was progressing rapidly, but newspapers were failing to keep up with the advances. The Times of London used a chunky serif font that was hard on the eye and wasteful of ink and paper. When Morison criticised The Times for its typeface in 1929, the newspaper challenged him to come up with something better. In his writings, Morison says that he looked to old-style fonts for inspiration, and set upon modifying a 16th-century typeface called Plantin. A sketch sheet was handed to Victor Lardent, a staff illustrator for The Times, who finalised the design. The Morison-Lardent drawings were accepted, and on October 3 1932, The Times went to print with its proud new typeface.

Other accounts, however, suggest that the redesign was far more challenging than Morison admitted. He went through countless failed prototypes and even sought help from outside designers, including the eminent typographer Harry Carter, who sketched some proposals. Years later Carter’s son, Matthew, himself a celebrated typographer, found those rejected sketch sheets languishing in his father’s sock drawer. “When I asked what happened to them, my father just laughed and said Morison had never said a word in reply,” Carter recalls. Parker believes he knows why Harry Carter’s drawings were turned down – Morison had by then been supplied with the pilfered designs of Number 54 by Pierpont. Precisely how Pierpont came upon them, Parker cannot say, but he stands by the theory. “Morison knew no bounds,” says Parker, who has numerous anecdotes about their many encounters that paint a picture of a cunning and devious man. Morison never took credit for designing the font himself, but claims only to have “excogitated” it. Years after its release, he wrote of the only font that he is credited with designing: “It has the merit of not looking as if it had been designed by somebody in particular.”

To date, no one but Giampa and Parker have claimed to have seen most of the evidence that supports the Burgess story. Sadly, no one else is likely to have the chance to verify their claims. In 1918, a fire tore through Burgess’s shipyard, incinerating any documents that might have shed light on his activities during 1904, when Parker suggests he made the original drawings for the new font. On the other side of the Atlantic, a bomb blast near the London offices of Monotype Corporation in 1941 destroyed much information about Morison’s activities during the redesign of The Times’s typeface.

The surviving brass pattern plate at the centre of the font controversy

All that remained were the Lanston Monotype archives in Giampa’s possession, until they too met with disaster. In January 2000, Giampa’s house was flooded, and a century’s worth of printing history was lost. “The bulk of the files ended up in a dumpster,” Giampa said. There is a second archive of Lanston Monotype drawings at The Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC, but it has been placed off limits. Parker visited The Smithsonian in 1996 and took copies of the Number 54 drawings, upon which he based his Starling font. Today, the originals of those drawings are in the Smithsonian’s archival warehouse, which is contaminated by asbestos and lead, and has been closed indefinitely.

In typography, there is no greater insult than the accusation of plagiarism. When Parker began circulating his theory about the origins of Times New Roman, he was howled down by a chorus of critics. British author Nicolas Barker, Morison’s biographer, labelled it “a misguided attempt to adjust history”. “It’s the creation of Mike Parker, who did it partly as a practical joke, and partly to help his friend Gerald Giampa,” Barker says. “Giampa was the potential beneficiary. Had he been able to demonstrate that the design had predated the UK version, there was the possibility to establish a patentable right to the designs, at least in the USA. That’s the only logical reason I can see for them wanting to produce this otherwise rather childish joke.” Parker responds that Barker is a “friend of Monotype” who has written many books and articles about Morison.

Barker and others say Parker has failed to produce any conclusive proof of his theory, but only colourful speculation based on unseen documents. Other critics include Jim Rimmer, a Canadian type craftsman based near Vancouver, who labelled Giampa a “pathological liar”. Rimmer said he had known Giampa for 35 years and called him a “prankster” who created the Burgess story “as a way of making himself look important”.

Matthew Carter, designer of the fonts Georgia and Verdana, is among those who believe the Burgess theory is “very plausible”. He has strong memories of Stanley Morison, a man he believes would stoop to such levels of deception. “I knew Morison and the company [British Monotype], and they were the most arrogant organisation in their heyday,” Carter says. “Morison was a very complex character. He liked playing jokes. He was interested in power, and he liked working behind the scenes. I can believe – though I still don’t know the truth – that he would have enjoyed taking part in a ruse like this.”

Top to bottom: A comparison of Times New Roman (Monotype 1931), Starling and Plantin (Monotype 1913, after Granjon ca. 1567).

The Times newspaper itself has begun accepting the possibility of an alternative history to its famous font. In 2007, the newspaper stated that Times New Roman was designed by Stanley Morison, Victor Lardent “and possibly Starling Burgess”.

Before his death in late June, Giampa defended his reputation. From behind the counter of an antique and curiosity shop on the Vancouver waterfront, the colourful Canadian printer said he had “absolutely not” fabricated the Burgess story, but that it was based on the documents and pattern plates he had unearthed in the Lanston Monotype archive. All of those records were lost in the flood on Prince Edward Island, he said, aside from one pattern plate in the possession of Mike Parker. It is upon this pattern plate that the entire Burgess theory now hangs.

Along with the Starling roman font, Parker has released a matching italic series. He says that in 1904 Burgess drew just five letters of an italic to accompany Number 54 before abandoning typography for aviation. Parker has taken it upon himself to finish the job and has spent the past few years carefully drawing the graceful slanted figures of a rich italic.

“Morison’s was a dog of an italic,” he says of the existing Times New Roman version, which he accepts was a Morison-Lardent creation. “It didn’t match the roman at all. It was a standard Monotype italic.” Now Parker has set out to rectify this by giving the world’s most popular font – no matter its name or creator – a deserving italic. Aside from the five inspirational characters, this is wholly Parker’s own work and, remarkably, it is his maiden typographic creation. Throughout his decades in the industry, Parker remained a creative administrator and researcher but was never himself a typographer.

And this, perhaps, is the real force behind Parker’s enthusiasm for the William Starling Burgess story: it has given him, for the first time, the chance to create a font of his own.

Joel Alas is a freelance writer and editor based in Berlin

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

Washington Post: Anne Frank's Unstilled Voice

Anne Frank's Unstilled Voice

By George Stevens Jr.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Anne Frank would have celebrated her 80th birthday this month. The diary she wrote as a teenager in a cramped Amsterdam attic lives in the hearts of readers across the world. Her story has been a continuing inspiration to many and made her one of the most enduring voices of World War II.

I became connected to her story 50 years ago, when my father asked me to be associate producer of "The Diary of Anne Frank," the first American motion picture to deal with the Holocaust. He and I flew to Munich in May 1957 to begin our research. This was my father's first time in Europe since his service as a lieutenant colonel in charge of a combat motion picture unit photographing the war in Europe. It was a rare opportunity for a son to relive his father's war.

We rented a car in Munich and drove to the small town of Dachau, where we viewed the remnants of the concentration camp that Hitler established in the 1930s. That camp operated until it was liberated in April 1945 by U.S. Army units that included my father's. What those troops found at Dachau, and what my father filmed, were scenes of unimaginable horror. That film became a permanent record of what had happened there, making it difficult in later years to deny Hitler's ravages with any credibility. I snapped a photograph of my father in a tan raincoat standing in the doorway of a building with the word "Brausbad" -- "shower bath" in German -- written on its pediment. The expression on his face made clear the memories that this grim facility evoked.

We went on to Normandy on the French coast. We walked the D-Day beaches and drove through the hedgerow country where the Americans broke a fierce German resistance. He said then that he realized that at the time of the Battle of the Bulge, he was within a few hundred kilometers of Anne Frank.

Next we went to Amsterdam to meet Anne Frank's father. Otto Frank was a tall, dignified man in his late 60s who welcomed us warmly to his modest office. He was an officer in the German army during World War I but left Germany with his family after Hitler came to power. He and his wife raised their two daughters, Anne and Margot, in Amsterdam, where he managed a small but thriving spice factory. In July 1942, as persecution of Jews in the Netherlands intensified, Otto Frank decided to take his family into hiding in the top-floor attic of the spice factory, a setting that Anne referred to as the Secret Annex.

The Franks lived there with another family until they were discovered by the Gestapo in 1944 and transported to concentration camps. Anne Frank and her sister died of typhus at Bergen Belsen in March 1945, a few weeks before British troops liberated the camp. Otto Frank and his wife, Edith, were sent to Auschwitz, where he came close to death but survived. Edith died at Auschwitz.

We spoke for a few minutes before Mr. Frank pulled open a filing-cabinet drawer and removed an object carefully wrapped in cloth. After placing it on the table, he unfolded the cloth and there before us was a small book with a red-and-white plaid cover. This was the diary his daughter had written in her own distinctive hand and illustrated with photos and newspaper clippings while the family was hiding in the Secret Annex.

Mr. Frank was composed. He said he wanted to do everything possible to help my father make a film that was true to the experience -- and he invited us to go with him to the spice factory at 263 Prinsengracht. The three of us entered the four-story building at the center of a block of rowhouses overlooking a canal. The building was empty and had been out of use for some time. We climbed the stairway until we were in the fourth-floor rooms where the families had hidden. Otto Frank described the day the Gestapo broke through the bookcase door that concealed the entrance. It was determined later that Gestapo Oberscharfuhrer Karl Silberbauer was the man in charge. He snatched Mr. Frank's briefcase and emptied the contents on the floor. He gathered up the silverware and a Hanukkah menorah and left behind papers and other contents as they herded the two families down the stairs.

Anne's diary remained on the floor.

On that day the normally efficient German war machine failed. Silberbauer left behind evidence -- a document that would one day make Anne Frank's voice and spirit an important part of world literature, a voice for humanity and tolerance. Her memory became an enduring presence that would grow in importance as the once-powerful voice of Adolf Hitler faded into ignominy.

George Stevens Jr., a filmmaker, author and playwright, received the Distinguished Advocate Award this month from the Anne Frank Foundation.

FT: Seeds of discontent

Seeds of discontent

By Harry Eyres

Published: June 13 2009 01:47 | Last updated: June 13 2009 01:47

An Orchard Invisible: A Natural History of Seeds
By Jonathan Silvertown
University of Chicago Press £17.50, 216 pages
FT Bookshop price: £14

The Garden of Invention: Luther Burbank and the Business of Breeding Plants
By Jane S Smith
The Penguin Press $25.95, 354 pages

Forgotten Fruits: The Stories Behind Britain’s Traditional Fruit and Vegetables
By Christopher Stocks
Windmill £8.99, 298 pages
FT Bookshop price: £7.19

Seeds are everywhere: one square metre of cultivated ground can contain tens of thousands. Yet these humble, apparently insignificant objects are among the most amazing pieces of organic matter on the planet. Many are delicious to eat; others provide us with oil, drugs and poisons. We all know that an acorn can grow into a mighty oak. We may be less familiar with the seeds of orchids, light as dust, that need to spend their first few years as parasites on fungi, or the largest seed in the world, the bomb-sized nut of the coco de mer coconut.

EDITOR’S CHOICE

More from Books - Nov-24

The history of seeds, seedlings and varieties of plants has been little told, considering both its captivating strangeness and its immense importance to the human race. What is especially fascinating and pertinent in this history is the intersection of biology, culture, politics, commerce and sheer amateurish improvisation. Each of these three books, by a biologist, a cultural historian, and a gardener, tells the story from different perspectives: biological, cultural, political and commercial. The overall narrative is one of increasing human control over nature, which at first led to a vision of unlimited variety in the late 19th century and then, a century on, to the more anxiety-inducing prospect of uncontrolled bioengineering in which the genetic manipulation of plants seems to lead inexorably to the genetic manipulation of humans.

First is the story of how seeds have evolved – over aeons of time, through natural selection, and without human intervention – to develop the varied properties that astonish us today. Then comes a pivotal moment in the 1870s: the remarkable career of the plant breeder Luther Burbank, who was the first to see how speeding up unnatural selection could drastically alter and improve the properties of plants. It was Burbank who, unwittingly, prepared the ground for such developments as transgenic technology, which dominate discussions of plant breeding today. The arrival of commercially driven breeding and planting has often resulted in higher yields and more reliable crops but has also led to the loss of many traditional varieties.

Jonathan Silvertown, professor of ecology at the UK’s Open University, has answered two fundamental but complex questions: what are seeds and how have they evolved? An Orchard Invisible contains some dense scientific argument but Silvertown, who is fascinated by the evolutionary strategies of seeds, nevertheless succeeds in making his enthusiasm infectious enough to attract the general reader.

He describes a seed as being like “an embryo in a picnic box”. The seeds of land plants, all of which derive from a single marine ancestor, require their own food supply: this is “endosperm”, which according to the most likely theory is a kind of aborted embryo within the seed vessel that feeds its sibling. If that sounds somewhat obscure, Silvertown reminds us that endosperm has become vital to human existence: it makes up most of the kernel of food grains such as rice, wheat and corn. “Sixty per cent of the world’s food supply is made up of this tissue,” Silvertown says.

The history of evolution is exciting not least because it is a story of sex – for plants as well as animals. The sex lives of seeds and plants, little understood until the 18th century, are stranger and more varied, however. Unlike us, some plants can reproduce asexually but sexual reproduction, in the case of flowering plants through pollination, remains the most popular route. Yes, even Boston beans do it.

Sexual reproduction has evolutionary advantages for plants. One reason nearly all the elms in Britain were wiped out by Dutch elm disease was that all these trees were descended from a single clone, perhaps in the form of a set of cuttings, brought over by the Romans when they invaded. The species reproduced clonally rather than sexually, with insufficient genetic diversity to combat the disease.

For the non-specialist reader the anecdotal evidence gathered here about the sheer weird wonder of seeds – their ability, say, to survive for thousands of years, or their sensitivity to colour changes – may be more winning than the more technical arguments about evolutionary strategy. One of the best properties of seeds, Silvertown reminds us, is that they can fly – helpful in terms of evolutionary strategy, no doubt, but also instructive in the evolution of human flight: the Wright Brothers’ pioneering aircraft, which took to the skies in 1903, was inspired by a seed, not a bird.

Unsurprisingly, Darwin looms large in the seed story. The great scientist’s 1869 study “The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication” inspired the most famous plant breeder in history, Luther Burbank, who became a national institution in the US on a par with his friends Thomas Edison and Henry Ford.

Born in 1849, Burbank was a shy, dreamy young man working in a plough factory in Massachusetts when he came across Darwin’s book on animal and plant breeding a year or two after it was published. As he later said, the book “opened a new world to me. It told me that variations [in plants] seemed to be susceptible, through selection, of permanent fixture in the individual.” By selecting, grafting and hybridising, as cultural historian Jane Smith tells us in her excellent biography, The Garden of Invention, a clever plant breeder might not simply improve an existing stock but create new varieties, whose properties would persist through generations.

This had happened before but more by chance than design. Burbank was original in refining the methods beyond anything previously achieved. He described his work in surprisingly lyrical terms: “We have learnt that [plant species] are as plastic in our hands as clay in the hands of the potter or colour on the artist’s canvas and can readily be moulded into more beautiful forms than any painter or sculptor can ever hope to bring forth.”

Burbank’s first great success was with potato seeds. Growing Early Rose potatoes on his small farm, he noticed a seed ball dangling from one of the plants. He marked the plant, waited for the seed ball to ripen, then went back to collect it, only to discover the thing had dropped off. He spent three days searching for it – time not spent in vain. His experiments with the 23 seeds contained in the matured seed ball he eventually recovered and propagated were the foundation of his remarkable career. Just one of the seeds gave rise to the Russet Burbank potato, one of the most important commercial varieties in the world, used, for example, by McDonald’s. Now, in a development that Burbank would never have anticipated, the Russet Burbank has been genetically modified by agricultural company Monsanto to create the Bt “New Leaf” Russet Burbank.

The Russet Burbank may have made Luther Burbank’s name but, although he made a good living from selling to nurseries, it did not make his fortune – it would not be possible to patent plants until four years after Burbank’s death in 1926. Despite this, Burbank’s ability, or even genius, as a plant breeder was not in question, despite methods that defied system. Over his long career in Santa Rosa, California, where he lived for the last 50 years of his life, he bred and sold new varieties of plums, blackberries, quinces, cherries, strawberries, rhubarb, walnuts, daisies, lilies and sunflowers. Many of these varieties are still of commercial importance today.

Burbank’s advances in plant breeding won him heroic status as a benefactor of mankind, combined with a Tolstoyan aura as a humble gardener. It also made him the locus of competing interests, one of which was science. Burbank’s relationship with the fast-developing world of science was complex and ambiguous, and makes up the most thought-provoking episodes of Smith’s biography.

Science wanted to appropriate Burbank, or at least put his wonderful discoveries on a scientific, replicable, basis. But Burbank himself, though courting scientific respectability, was also ambivalent about it, for a variety of reasons. One was that his attitude to nature was not purely scientific but more profoundly derived from his study of the Transcendentalist philosophers and nature lovers Emerson and Thoreau. Asked to give a scientific paper, he shocked his audience by speaking in a proto-New Age language about “vibrating energies”. The second reason was more practical: there was an obvious clash between the scientific ideal of the free sharing of knowledge and the instincts of a commercial plant breeder.

Burbank felt he should have been able to benefit more from his discoveries and was a vociferous proponent of the extension of patent law to plants. But one wonders what the Emersonian gardener would have made of the brave new world of transgenic technology as practised by Monsanto and others, where the protection of patent has led to the possibility of monopolising entire food chains.

There seems to be something innocent about Burbank’s lifelong work of plant breeding, summed up by the chef and Slow Food guru Alice Waters: “There’s nothing wrong with improving plants. Luther Burbank ... did that. But he didn’t violate nature doing it.” To put it another way, it’s hard to imagine that Burbank would breed varieties designed to look good and last for ever but that taste of practically nothing, like those that fill so many supermarket shelves. Forgotten Fruits, by Christopher Stocks, a former gardening writer at the Independent on Sunday, is a portrait of the varieties we have lost, or are in danger of losing, as a result of plant-breeding, which has prioritised convenience over individuality. It is also designed as an inspiration and spur to contemporary horticulturalists to go out and plant them.

Most of this attractively anecdotal book consists of a glossary of tasty traditional varieties of fruit and vegetables that have fallen out of favour. In our age of plenty, it is fascinating to learn than we subsist on a much more restricted palette of crops than our Victorian ancestors. A leading British seed company that offers 12 varieties of peas today offered 53 in 1853. As well as this severe diminution in diversity, there has also been a drastic reduction in the acreage of the country’s orchards: around two-thirds of the country’s apple plantations disappeared between 1950 and 2000. This has led to the mass importing of apples from countries such as New Zealand, South Africa and Chile.

One of Stocks’ most important points is made in passing; many of these valuable varieties, some of which are making a comeback, were bred, more or less accidentally, by amateurs. That is where Darwin, the gentleman scientist, Luther Burbank, the artistic plant breeder, and the retired brewer Richard Cox, who bred the Cox’s Orange Pippin, join forces. In their different ways, each celebrated the immense natural variety of plants and their seeds. None would have welcomed a world in which that variety and biodiversity were sacrificed to the streamlined efficiency of mass-market monocultures. But that is only one possible outcome in the long, twisting tale of humanity’s relationship with plants.

harry.eyres@ft.com
More columns at www.ft.com/eyres

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

WSJ: Sacrifice and the Greatest Generation

Excerpt:

The surviving members of that generation -- now in their 80s and 90s -- are living reminders of the good that can come from hard times. They can teach us that if we're to get through this time of crisis a better nation with a fundamentally stronger economy, we'd better learn how to work together and organize our lives around what we need -- not just what we want.

===

Sacrifice and the Greatest Generation

These are the young Americans who went thousands of miles and defeated the mightiest military empires ever unleashed against us.

By TOM BROKAW

When asked how I came to write "The Greatest Generation," I recount a trip to Normandy in 1984. I went there to produce a documentary on the 40th anniversary of D-Day. I had looked forward to a week of stirring stories, evenings of oysters and Calvados, and long runs through the countryside.

Instead, from the moment I stepped onto Omaha Beach with two veterans of the First Division I had an out-of-body experience. Geno Merli, who earned the Medal of Honor, and Harry Garton, who lost both legs in combat, landed in the first wave at Omaha. Working-class products from Pennsylvania, they were soft-spoken and matter-of-fact as they described for me the horrors of that day and all the fighting that was yet to come.

Listening to them I was transported back to my childhood in the Great Plains during the '40s and '50s. In the heartland, men like Geno and Harry were always on call to help a neighbor overhaul a car, build a fence, sponsor a baseball team or Boy Scout troop.

Associated Press

Along with their wives they were always volunteering, organizing potluck suppers and bake sales to support community projects. They knew the price of every piece of produce and every cut of meat in the local supermarket. And most families I knew had war bonds tucked away to go with the savings account at the hometown bank.

As I began to write the wartime accounts of that generation, I realized how much they were formed by the deprivations and lessons of the Great Depression. During that period life was about common sacrifice and going without the most ordinary items, such as enough food or new clothes.

So many veterans told me they got their first new pairs of shoes and boots when they enlisted. When I recently interviewed Walt Ehlers -- a poor Kansas farm boy who received the Medal of Honor for his heroism at Normandy -- he lit up when he described the breakfasts during basic training. "Every kind of cereal you could imagine!" he said. "And pancakes and bacon and eggs."

As for basic training, he said putting up hay on his uncle's farm in August was much tougher.

If you look at the old black-and- white photographs of the physicals conducted during induction, there's no obesity in that crowd of young men. In fact, some look malnourished.

These are the same young Americans who went thousands of miles across the Atlantic and thousands of miles across the Pacific and defeated the mightiest military empires ever unleashed against us. Their sacrifices at home and on the frontlines make our current difficulties look like a walk on the beach in comparison.

The surviving members of that generation -- now in their 80s and 90s -- are living reminders of the good that can come from hard times. They can teach us that if we're to get through this time of crisis a better nation with a fundamentally stronger economy, we'd better learn how to work together and organize our lives around what we need -- not just what we want.

Mr. Brokaw, special correspondent for NBC News, is the author of "The Greatest Generation" (Random House, 1998).

Please add your comments to the Opinion Journal forum.

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WSJ: The Art You Can Eat

ASIA NEWS
MAY 16, 2009

The Art You Can Eat

In Kyoto, kaiseki restaurants serve Japan's version of haute cuisine

By STAN SESSER

Kyoto, Japan

The meal at famed Kikunoi restaurant was cutting-edge: 12 courses made up of 60 different items, each fanatically sourced using the freshest and highest-quality ingredients available. And in the trendiest fashion, the entire meal, which stretched to almost three hours, weighed in at less than 1,000 calories.

Visit Kyoto's temples and shrines.

Welcome to kaiseki (kye-SEK-ee), the original fixed-price tasting menu, whose roots in Kyoto go back almost 500 years to the Japanese tea ceremony's origins and the practices of meat-shunning Buddhist monks. Today, the tradition is a major inspiration for the multicourse degustation menus now popular in the West, at places like El Bulli in Spain, Joël Robuchon in Las Vegas and the French Laundry in California's Napa Valley. Chefs from world-class restaurants make frequent pilgrimages to Kikunoi to experience the work of the 56-year-old chef, Yoshihiro Murata.

Kyoko Murata, Mr. Murata's wife and Kikunoi's maitre d', says celebrated guests are a fairly regular occurrence there. "Ferran Adrià comes here often and we also eat at El Bulli. They're definitely influenced by kaiseki food," she says. I rattle off the names of a few other Michelin three-star chefs, American and French. "Of course they've eaten here," she replies.

Kikunoi has been serving kaiseki meals since it opened in 1911. Mr. Adrià, whose avant-garde "molecular cuisine" has led many critics to call his restaurant the best in the world, praised Kikunoi in the introduction he wrote for Mr. Murata's cookbook, "Kaiseki: The Exquisite Cuisine of Japan's Kikunoi Restaurant" (Kodansha International, 2006). "While in the West we cook with the senses, the heart, and logic, the Japanese add to this an extra component . . . the soul. Nowhere is this better exemplified than by the work of Yoshiro Murata," he wrote.

A kaiseki dinner.

After spending three days in Kyoto, where visitors can eat variations of kaiseki for breakfast, lunch and dinner, I began to see why this centuries-old cuisine holds so much fascination for the most inventive chefs of Europe and America. Kaiseki is a tonic to the senses from every direction, and something no Western restaurant I've ever dined can approach. It demands perfection from the freshness and preparation of the ingredients to the dishes they are served on. The noise in some New York restaurants makes it impossible to concentrate on your meal; kaiseki diners sit in a tranquil, private room and gaze onto a Japanese garden while polite, efficient waitresses in kimonos cater to every need. The cost, at Kikunoi, is $150 a person -- a bargain compared with, say, the $275 tasting menu at Thomas Keller's Per Se in New York.

Derek Wilcox, a 32-year-old American, has worked in Kikunoi's kitchen for two years at no pay to learn how kaiseki is properly done. His hours -- 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. six days a week -- are grueling. He plans to open a kaiseki restaurant in the U.S. in seven to 10 years -- the amount of time he figures he'll need to learn all the principles and techniques.

Joe LeMonier

Trip Planner

Getting There: The Shinkansen, Japan's high-speed train system, whisks you to Kyoto from Tokyo in just over two hours for about $130 each way. It leaves from Tokyo Station and Shinagawa Station.

Where to Stay: Kyoto is filled with tiny hotels and Japanese inns (ryokans). They needn't be expensive. On my last night, I paid less than $100 at a downtown business hotel for a cramped room and an airliner-size bathroom. On the upscale side, two Kyoto hotels combine luxury with an authentic feeling of being in Japan. They are the Hyatt Regency Kyoto, 644-2 Sanjyusangendo Mawari-cho, Higashiyama-ku (Tel.: 81-75-541-1234; about $350) and Brighton Hotel Kyoto, Nakadachiuri, Shinmachi-dori, Kamigyo-ku (Tel.: 81-75-441-4411; about $280). If price is no object and you want a private kaiseki dinner in your own room at a luxurious ryokan where English is spoken, Hiiragiya Ryokan fills the bill. Nakahakusancho, Fuyacho Aneroji-Agaru, Nakagyo-ku (Tel.: 81-75-221-1136; $300 to $900 a person, including kaiseki dinner).

Where to Eat: Kikunoi is the most famous of the kaiseki restaurants, and the dinner is a good value. Gion Maruyama, Makuzugahara, Higashiyama-ku (Tel.: 81-75-561-0015; $150). For a hip, informal kaiseki, try Guilo Guilo, located in an old wooden house. Nishikiyamachi-dori, Matsubara Sagaru, Shimogyo-ku (Tel.: 81-75-343-7070, $37). The well-known Hyotei offers a kaiseki breakfast. Kusakawa-cho 35, Nanzenji, Sakyo-ku (Tel.: 81-75-771-4116, $45). The bento box lunch at Yasuku Gozen is a generous preview of the kaiseki dinner. Yasaka-dori, Gion Miyugawa Cho, Kyogaki (Tel.: 81-75-531-6600).

Kaiseki's elaborate style dates back to the 16th century and the tea master Sen no Rikyu, who thought the powdered green tea used in the tea ceremony was too intense to be sipped on an empty stomach. He started serving small plates of food to make drinking the tea more enjoyable. With Kyoto home to Japan's great tea masters, kaiseki flowered here, too -- one of the ways food, art and religion have converged to make Kyoto the spiritual and culinary center of Japan.

A visitor could be happily occupied for a month visiting the city's more than 1,000 Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines, many with extensive grounds and gardens. Dozens of ryokans -- traditional Japanese inns, some serving kaiseki meals -- are an alternative to traditional hotels. Many of Kyoto's old buildings have been demolished and replaced with ugly concrete boxes, but there are still enough old wooden houses around to turn a walk into a discovery. A day of visiting Kyoto's temples ending with a kaiseki dinner at Kikunoi is an experience visitors won't quickly forget.

The simplicity of a kaiseki dinner masks its complexity. In contrast to Western cuisines, there are no fancy sauces, except for an occasional dipping sauce. Presentations might be elegant, but they're always uncomplicated. Food doesn't arrive in towering stacks; the waiter never says that "Chef" wants you to eat a particular dish by starting with a certain ingredient. And there's no fuss about wine; while a wine list is usually available, the house sake complements the meal perfectly. Your only decision is whether to have the sake warm or cold.

The evening at Kikunoi begins on a note some might find jarring. A young, kimono-clad woman greets you at the door on her knees; as you remove your shoes, she touches her head to the floor. Then she escorts you through the blond-wood corridors to your dining room, which is spacious, carpeted with tatami mats and empty, except for a low, black-lacquer table in the center. You sit on a pillow leaning against a leather backrest, with a view through a glass wall of the illuminated garden. Your legs rest under the table in a pit, heated to keep your feet warm.

The meal of seafood and vegetables doesn't disappoint. With minimal cooking and seasoning so as not to mask the quality of the ingredients, every bite is a revelation. In one course, nine items are arranged on a plate like a rock garden. Some stand alone (fava beans, salt-pickled squid, lily bulb petals), others in combination (grilled squid with seaweed and egg yolk, a skewer of abalone, shrimp and avocado).

During my visit, much of the meaning of this sophisticated meal would have passed over my head had I not been dining with Yoshiko Isshiki, a curator of modern art who spends a lot of time in Kyoto and has made food her passion. In our first course, as an example, a piece of the grilled squid was coated with finely chopped seaweed and cut to resemble the curled stem of a flower. Several courses later, steamed tilefish was accompanied by a warabi fernhead -- which, Ms. Isshiki pointed out, looked exactly like that piece of squid.

Guilo Guilo serves a hip kaiseki.

Since the essence of kaiseki is seasonality, Kikunoi's menu changes completely every month. "The Japanese really want to get the idea of being part of the season," Mr. Wilcox, the aspiring chef, explained after my dinner in mid-April. "Now they want cherry blossoms on their plate. Two weeks ago, it was buds from the cherry tree, and a week from now they won't want them at all." Bamboo shoots and mountain yams were at their peak when I visited. Kikunoi served bamboo-shoot sushi, with tiny sardines, fried tofu, green pea broth and shrimp cake, and simmered bamboo shoots, with seaweed and the roe of red sea bream. Mountain yam came cut into shapes of butterflies in a salad of seaweed, baby eels and sea urchin.

There are some variations. The restaurant Hyotei serves a kaiseki breakfast, including chicken meatballs covered in chopped seaweed, sushi wrapped in a cherry leaf and the best hard-cooked egg I've ever had. Its only concession to the hour is the traditional Asian breakfast soup of rice with fish broth and pickled vegetables. If you've ever wanted to blow $45 on breakfast, this is place to do it . The kaiseki at Guilo Guilo, meanwhile, is positively radical. In an old house with timbered ceilings, the place hops as waiters bound up steep steps with dishes on their arms. Sea bass roe with coffee-flavored potato sauce, a rice ball topped with foie gras sauce and tofu skin, and a panna cotta of green peas with honey ice cream and deep-fried lily roots -- this is 21st-century kaiseki, and at $37 it's both inexpensive and fabulous.

Write to Stan Sesser at stan.sesser@awsj.com

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FT: Our cultural revolution

Our cultural revolution

By Harry Eyres

Published: May 16 2009 02:24 | Last updated: May 16 2009 02:24

Afew years ago I got to know a Chinese woman who had studied classical performance at the Beijing Conservatoire at the time of the Cultural Revolution. Her story was less terrible than many; she had been exiled to Mongolia and deprived of any contact with her beloved piano. Then she had been faced with the hazardous business of getting out of the country, trying to start a new life, but with a career in pieces that could never be properly reassembled. We have all heard far worse tales: parents publicly denounced, humiliated, beaten up by their own children, and teachers by their pupils, many of them ending up committing suicide.

Of course, nothing like that could ever happen in a country like Britain or the US, we think. We are free of such crazy ideological zealotry. We are not in the business of exiling pianists to Mongolia. We are tolerant, culture-loving people.

I wonder. Not long ago I got into conversation with a young British couple on the Tube who had never heard of Adam and Eve. When I recounted the creation story told in the Book of Genesis, one of them said: “Oh, it sounds like some religious thing.” I began to think that we had undergone a cultural revolution of our own, less dramatic and obviously violent than the one in China, but no less far-reaching in its effects.

Actually, our cultural revolution and the Chinese one have common roots. Both are rooted in the Enlightenment – or perhaps more accurately in Bacon’s epoch-making repudiation of large parts of Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy and Christian theology, which paved the way for the Enlightenment. In scientific terms this was immensely powerful, of course; freed from atavistic prohibitions on knowledge, science could boldly go further than the ancients could ever have imagined.

But the effect on culture and, more specifically, on language and literature of this kind of Enlightenment thinking seems more dubious. Because classical and Biblical science (Bacon would have called it natural philosophy) was lacking, the logic of Bacon’s more zealous followers was to throw out classical literature and the Bible itself – the baby with the bathwater.

Nowadays it is the exception rather than the rule for children in the west to be conversant with the Bible and the classics. New generations of literature teachers consider the Book of Job and the works of Homer and Horace to be old hat – in the most extreme cases, the work of dead white males that can happily be consigned to the dustbin in favour of literature of a more progressive bent.

They have a point. When I arrived at my rather old-fashioned secondary school, more than half the teachers were classicists; more relevantly, many of them were happy to pass on a traditional version of the classics, which appeared to have little bearing on life in the late 20th century. Of course, knowledge and pedagogy must move on: modern languages and sciences are essential ways of navigating the world. As a teenager, I joined in the call for a cull on classics and a rejuvenation of the curriculum. Perhaps I wasn’t so different from those Chinese children who publicly humiliated their teachers.

But it turns out that what holds for science does not work with literature and language, or with music. Science is comfortable with the ideology of progress – new theories supplant old ones; Copernicus and Galileo confound the geocentrists; Darwin’s theory of evolution through natural selection trumps all earlier ones. But literature and music do not progress in the same way. Much of 19th-century Romantic literature in Britain, Germany and Russia consists of rewritings of Hamlet. Two or three scenes from King Lear contain the whole of Beckett. Chopin and Schumann, revolutionaries in the best sense, spent their time studying the works of JS Bach.

For quite a long time now, it has been fashionable in the west – though not in China – to denounce the excesses and cruelties of the Cultural Revolution. There are signs in China now, for the first time in two or three generations, of a renewal of interest in traditional religious and philosophical systems; the stock of Confucius is rising and that of Mao falling. Peter Head, director of global planning at Arup, told me recently that part of the work Arup is doing in China on sustainable building and development has involved workshopping philosophical ideas from Taoism.

Of course, reconsidering old literary, philosophical and religious traditions carries the danger of a return to reactionary pigheadedness. Here in multicultural Britain, education rightly stresses the diversity of traditions (none of which would endorse ignorance of their own founding principles). But this should not happen at the expense of the founding traditions of the society, the traditions of Greco-Roman thought, art and literature and Judaeo-Christian religion and theology; without knowledge of those, very little else in the cultural and literary history makes sense. Ignorant of those things, a young person will walk through the great gardens of our culture, the Uffizi or the Prado or the National Gallery, the works of Dante, Shakespeare, Cervantes and Goethe, without being able to name any of the flowers.

harry.eyres@ft.com
More columns at www.ft.com/eyres

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

ST: School memories

May 16, 2009

School memories

By rebecca lynne tan

Two iconic Singapore schools, St. Joseph's Institution (SJI) and the National Junior College (NJC), have launched commemorative books on the schools' history. Apart from tracing the schools' stories from its early days, both books are also chockful of sepia-toned old photographs and vivid accounts and memories from its students' past. Life! takes a look at the books and speaks to its authors about the motivation behind them. rltan@sph.com.sg National Junior College They were teased for being elite students who looked like carpark attendants. But they still proudly donned their cement-grey uniforms with the epaulettes and silver buttons. They were the class of 1969, the pioneer batch of students from Singapore's first junior college, National Junior College (left). Dubbed by The Straits Times in 1968 as a 'college of the elite' because the school called for applications from the country's top pre-university students, it celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. Seven former students from the class of 1969 have come together to produce a commemorative book titled And They Called Us Car Park Attendants. Ms Julia d'Silva, 56, a research analyst at the Ministry of Defence who is part of the team behind the book, told Life! that a boring title would not suit the theme of the book. They wanted one that 'would intrigue and arouse curiosity'. The idea behind the 186-page book first came when some sixty-niners (as the class of 1969 calls itself) attended the school's 35th anniversary in 2004. One of them, American-based writer and housewife Wong Moh Keed, had penned down some of her memories to share with her schoolmates at the dinner. Her friends decided to produce a book of their collective memories. The project was named Project Sweet Sweet, after the popular 1950s song Memories Are Made Of This, which goes 'Sweet, sweet the memories you gave to me...'. Ms Wong, who is the book's editor, says: 'When we first started, we had no idea how the project was going to turn out apart from that we wanted to collect memories from the sixty-niners.' In order to get the details of their experiences, the team contacted more than 200 schoolmates to collect information about school activities and what they remembered. Ms d'Silva says: 'The challenge was trying to write something based on what were very thin memories.' She adds that they wished they had started sooner, while the memories were fresher. The book took five years to complete. In the final stages, the team - which had members based all over the world from the United States and Britain to Australia - worked round the clock to produce the book in time for the opening of NJC's boarding school today. Ms Wong, who lives in Washington D.C., said she would work throughout the day and when she was done, Ms d'Silva in Singapore would take over. 'The book was literally massaged 24 hours a day. It worked out well because of the time difference,' she says with a laugh. Washington D.C. is 12 hours behind Singapore. Ms Wong, who hopes the happy experiences of the sixty-niners will resonate with other NJC students, adds: 'The book is not just about NJC. It's about young people who were given an opportunity - it's about a system that went right.' The book costs $39.90 and is available at Times The Bookshop. Proceeds will go towards an NJC arts scholarship fund. St. Joseph's Institution Like most mischievous characters, ex-Josephian KF Seetoh (Class of 1978) has had his fair share of schoolyard scuffles. In St. Joseph Institution's book Men For Others, the self-styled food guru and founder of street food guide Makansutra recounts an episode when he exchanged several punches with his hockey team mate outside the school in Bras Basah Road. 'We got into a fight and when I saw my teacher heading our way, I thought we were going to get scolded,' he told Life!. But what happened next was quite the opposite. The teacher, Brother Godfrey, began to referee the fight instead. By facilitating it and allowing them to execute several more blows to each other's faces, he made them realise the fight was pointless. The mates shook hands, became friends again and laughed. That lesson left a lasting impression on Seetoh, who is one of 50 former students profiled in the 170-page book. The boys school was founded by the Christian brothers of the De La Salle order in 1852. The book, named after the La Sallian mission statement 'men of integrity and men for others', was launched yesterday at the official opening of SJI International in Thomson Road. The school, along with secondary school SJI Independent and primary school SJI Junior, come under the SJI umbrella of schools. Designed and printed by Straits Times Press, the book was helmed by former Straits Times deputy editor Warren Fernandez, 43, who is now the regional manager (Asia Pacific) for communications and strategy at Royal Dutch Shell. He says the idea behind the book came from SJI old boy Tan Tee How, National Development Ministry's permanent secretary, who sits on the school's board of governors. SJI had just opened the international school, which welcomed its first batch of students in 2007, and the board wanted a book to explain the motivation behind the setting up of the new establishment. Mr Fernandez says: 'To tell that story, you have to tell the story of what the school stands for - the values, the mission, the people - and that's how it started.' While SJI's alumni includes Deputy Prime Minister Dr Tony Tan (Class of 1958), Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Teo Chee Hean (Class of 1972), and DBS Bank managing director Bernard Tan (Class of 1982), he stresses that the book is not meant to be a list of 'who's who' of old boys. 'It (SJI) has produced prominent people and I don't think we want to be ashamed of that,' he says. But more importantly, he aimed to profile a spread of old boys from across different years, who went on to pursue various paths by becoming fathers, politicians, businessmen, cooks, entertainers and tailors. 'We wanted to show that there is a spread in terms of what you can do with your life - it is not just one definition of success,' he says. 'It is basically using whatever skills, talents, abilities you have, and putting it to good use.' The book costs $50 and is available at the SJI Independent general office at 38 Malcolm Road, tel: 6250-0022. Old boys get a 20 per cent discount while current students can buy it for $25.

Copyright © 2007 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved. Privacy Statement & Condition of Access

WSJ: The Candy Man Can

OPINION: TASTE
MAY 1, 2009

The Candy Man Can

By STEVE ALMOND

Knowing my penchant for all things sugary, a friend recently gave me a wonderful gift: a framed candy-bar wrapper dating back to the Great Depression. The odd name of the bar, "Chicken Dinner," was accented by the label art: a steaming chicken. Sad to say, Chicken Dinner did not include any actual chicken parts. It was mostly nuts and chocolate. But why would a confectioner name a chocolate bar after a Sunday meal?

This is a profound question in itself, of course, but it also highlights an odd fact: At times of economic turmoil, the palate craves the cheap luxury of sweets. Indeed, while most manufacturers are struggling, companies such as Hershey's and Nestle are reporting increased sales. Apparently there is nothing more soothing to the financially insecure than a candy bar, however oddly named. To understand why requires a look back at our past.

For most of human history, sweets have been the purview of the rich. This is especially true of chocolate. Both in the Old World and the New, chocolate was consumed exclusively by the aristocracy, and in liquid form. The technology required to render chocolate into a solid came along only in the mid-19th century. But it took World War I for the chocolate bar to emerge as a distinct culinary product. American companies began mass-producing bars as single-serving rations for the soldiers. When the "dough boys" returned to the States, they stoked the domestic demand for candy bars. Ironically, it was the onset of the Depression that actually ushered in the golden age of candy bars. What had been, just a century earlier, the ultimate luxury foodstuff, became manna for the masses.

Which brings us back to the Chicken Dinner. The manufacturer of this bar, the Sperry Candy Co. of Milwaukee, settled on this name in an effort to suggest the wholesome attributes of its product. It wasn't selling a treat; it was selling a meal. To this end, Sperry would later introduce bars called Chicken Spanish, Denver Sandwich and Club Sandwich.

In this sense, candy bars might be regarded as America's first fast food: cheap, self-contained and filling -- at least in the short-term. Candy makers quickly seized on our national penchant for nutritional self-delusion, and the production of nickel bars kicked into high gear. According to the late Ray Broekel, the author of "The Great American Candy Bar Book," more than 30,000 distinct brands were introduced during the Depression.

The variety of regionally made bars available back then was dazzling. Most major cities had confectioners cranking out bars, and big cities such as Chicago and Boston boasted dozens. The range of ingredients included local nuts and produce such as pecans, walnuts, strawberries, cherries and figs.

No doubt the strangest bar to be introduced during the boom was the infamous Vegetable Sandwich, produced during the health craze of the 1920s. Billed as "a delicious candy made with vegetables," the bar consisted of dehydrated celery, peas and carrots covered in chocolate. While it's true that the Vegetable Sandwich probably lived up to its marketing tag -- "will not constipate" -- it never quite caught on with the public.

Still, what people wanted then was a dessert that they could convince themselves was healthy. The same holds true today. Consolidation by industrial giants such as Hershey's and Mars has long since driven most regional bars out of existence, and a much smaller number of national brands has emerged. But brands like Snicker's continue to be marketed as "satisfying" (read: filling and nutritious) snacks. Nor is it any surprise that retail candy sales have been strong during the current recession. Candy bars remain an incredibly affordable luxury, products that simultaneously deliver a sugar high and a nostalgic buzz, by reminding consumers of the innocent pleasures of childhood.

But the broader lesson of the candy-bar boom is that American eaters, faced with a broken economy, still turn to quick caloric fixes. One need look no further than the modern fast-food industry, which is thriving in much the same way as Depression-era confectioners. While most companies are reporting staggering losses, McDonald's saw a 5.4% sales spike in January, largely due to its Dollar Menu: It now features a host of items, ranging from the McDouble cheeseburger to the McChicken sandwich.

Wendy's has followed suit, introducing three new sandwiches for 99 cents, while Burger King has gone one better, offering an expanded Value Menu that includes 10 breakfast options for a buck. In fact, virtually every fast-food purveyor has shifted emphasis in the past few months, rolling out super-cheap options designed to appeal to cash-strapped consumers.

Like the early candy merchants, who hawked their wares from pushcarts, fast-food companies have recognized that their customers are, in large part, impulse buyers. This is why they've purchased locations that draw heavy foot traffic and people with time to kill.

The atmosphere of economic insecurity has been a boon to fast food in one other crucial manner. Eating healthfully often costs a premium. Consider the price of organic produce (though please don't consider the price of organic produce at Whole Foods -- that's just too depressing). What hungry American in this economy is going to choose an organic Fuji apple when the same outlay will buy a Triple-Layer Nachos and a Cinnamon Twist at Taco Bell?

Fast-food companies, like confectioners, tend to target populations -- kids and teenagers in particular -- who are not known for their attention to nutritional fine print. But grown-ups with less cash in their wallets are also susceptible. If the chocolate-bar boom that coincided with our last financial crisis is any indication, fast-food profits will continue to rise, at the expense of our health. In hard times, it turns out, Americans remain more or less kids in a candy shop.

Mr. Almond is the author of the books "Candyfreak" and "(Not That You Asked)".

Copyright 2008 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

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WSJ: A Shift to Recipe-less Cooking

Excerpt: Cooking is about technique and inspiration, rather than detailed instructions. Throw yourself in the kitchen. Learn about ingredients, not just knowing that fennel is green with the white bulbs, but fennel tastes like licorice and goes well with other flavors like citrus and beef.

===

FOOD & DRINK
APRIL 1, 2009, 4:31 P.M. ET

A Shift to Recipe-less Cooking

Some cookbook authors are moving away from the rigidity of recipes and advocating improvisation in the kitchen

By PERVAIZ SHALLWANI

Since the late 1800s, when recipes as we know them today were first widely introduced, home cooks have been increasingly creating dishes using line-by-line lists of measured ingredients and detailed directions.

Maria Robledo

Sally Schneider, author of "The Improvisational Cook," with cookbook author Jim Peterson ("Sauces").

But as people look for quicker and easier ways to make everyday meals, some are moving away from the rigidity of recipes and advocating improvisational cooking, where measurements are approximations and ingredients are interchangeable.

Among them: Marc Matsumoto, a freelance writer and marketing consultant, who launched the Web site NoRecipes.com a year ago. The site's motto: "No recipes: Cooking is more fun without them." Mr. Matsumoto focuses on technique and inspiration, rather than detailed instructions, when he writes about his off-the-cuff creations that include spicy lemongrass soft-shell crab, and shrimp and duck gumbo.

"I think 50% of cooking is technique and a lot of people don't learn the technique and rely on recipes as a crutch," says Mr. Matsumoto, 32, who first learned to cook from his mother. His advice: "Throw yourself in the kitchen. Learn about ingredients, not just knowing that fennel is green with the white bulbs, but fennel tastes like licorice and goes well with other flavors like citrus and beef."

Food historian Jean Johnson is also advocating improvisational cooking as she tours the country promoting her measurement-free cookbook "Cooking Beyond Measure," published in August by Seventy-Sixth Avenue Press. She teaches home cooks to be "fluid" so they can look to their cupboards instead of the grocery store when a dish calls for an ingredient they don't have. "I find that after the work day, to have to follow one more set of directions before dinner seems to hit a nerve," she says.

Indeed, improvisational cooking "is a reaction, in a way, to super-programmed cookbooks where everything is legislated down to exact measurements," says food historian and author Anne Mendelson, whose most recent book, "Milk," looks at the history of dairy. "Recipes didn't used to be necessary. They are sort of lab manual cookery in a way."

Five Tips For Improvising in the Home Kitchen

Taste

Figure out what flavors you like, and also which ones pair well together. But remember that not every ingredient tastes the same each time. Also, know what ingredients taste like before they are cooked -- it will help you to spot the flavor in a dish. "Taste real sour cream and low-fat sour cream and describe the difference," says author Sally Schneider. "A whole world of senses opened up," which helps one know how to improvise with a dish.

Focus on Techniques

Using the right kind of oil or heating the pan to the right temperature is going to result in a better piece of meat than any amount of fancy spice rub or marinade, says NoRecipes.com's Marc Matsumoto. Learn some of the basic skills, such as how to beat eggs or sauté vegetables, which you can apply to multiple dishes. Also, cook different vegetables and meats so you get a sense of cook time for various ingredients – this will come in handy when throwing together a sauté or adding extras to a pasta.

Learn to Make Versatile Bases

Most stocks and sauces that come out of a jar are easy and cheap to make. Cook yourself a big batch at home, and you can freeze it use in a variety of dishes. For example, instead of throwing away chicken bones, turn them into a broth that can then be made into a soup or used to make risotto or a flavorful pot of rice. Or make a marina sauce that can be used in a variety of pastas, pizza or egg dishes.

Substitute Ingredients

Beans are often interchangeable, cauliflower can usually take the place of broccoli, and chicken can many times replace pork. This is how new dishes are often created. Experiment!

Don't be Afraid to Make Mistakes

Most every dish started out a mistake somewhere along the road, where someone threw ingredients together and adjusted to meet his or her own tastes, says cookbook author Mark Bittman. If you don't make mistakes, you'll never know what works -- or not.

The rise of recipes that use precise measurements is widely credited to Fannie Farmer, a student, and later, director of the Boston Cooking School, who published "The Boston Cooking-School Cookbook" in 1896. Until Ms. Farmer's manual, cookbooks were written in prose, calling for a pinch of this or a handful of that.

"The Boston Cooking-School Cookbook," which survives today as "The Fannie Farmer Cookbook," featured nearly 2,000 recipes that gave detailed instructions using a standardized system of measurement (teaspoon, cup, etc.). Ms. Farmer also included scientific explanations with her recipes, and wrote essays on housekeeping and cleaning. The rising middle-class and subsequent growth in the number of women looking to homemaking as a profession turned Ms. Farmer's book into a hit -- it has sold more than 4 million copies to date.

Today's recipes are still built on Ms. Farmer's model of listing level measurements for each ingredient and directions that include exact temperatures and times. But with more people having little understanding of the basics of cooking and how to adapt it, plus the advent of chef cookbooks featuring hard-to-recreate restaurant recipes and stylized photos, some home cooks are overwhelmed by what they call excessive details.

"I think we have gone too far in making recipes too rigid," says cookbook editor and author Judith Jones, vice president at Knopf publishing house, who brought to life Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking," among many other cooking tomes. Ms. Jones says "persnickety" details in recipes, such as asking for a specific size onion, mandating "fussy" ways of cutting vegetables and listing expensive or hard-to-find ingredients, are frustrating home cooks.

In response, she's writing an upcoming book, "The Pleasures of Cooking for One," to be released in October, which will feature simple recipes and give tips for different ways to use extra ingredients or leftovers over several days. She plans to address some of the basic tenets of cooking, such as understanding what a teaspoon of salt feels like in your palm so you don't have to measure it every time. "You get a freedom and it gives you a feeling to be more creative," Ms. Jones says.

But the reason cookbooks are loaded with details these days is not without warrant. Home cooks more than ever today don't know the basics of cooking -- once learned by watching parents or grandparents in the kitchen. Frozen entrees and instant meals have left many needing exact instructions when trying to cook a dish from scratch.

"The food editors had to educate," says former chef Sally Schneider, who has written two books on the subject of improvisational cooking. "The way they did that was to be more explicit with their recipes."

Ms. Schneider focuses on teaching cooks to deconstruct dishes into their basic tenets: know how different ingredients taste, build on successful meals and be okay with making mistakes.

"Once you learn to look at recipes, you can see that there is a structure to them," Ms. Schneider says. "That might be the thing to respect until you learn the variables. Suppose you see a recipe that has peas in it, and you go to the market and don't see peas, but you see lima beans. Using similar ingredients is a way to start."

Ms. Johnson also suggests experimenting with variations on a dish. "Cooking starts with building a foundation, for example, taking leftover steamed quinoa and dressing it with fruits, nuts and honey for breakfast," she says. "Add vegetables or a cooked piece of meat and a little salad dressing to make a light lunch or a hearty dinner."

But improvisational cooking may not be for everyone. Mark Bittman, author of "How to Cook Everything," says that for someone who doesn't have some grounding in basic cooking methods such as roasting a chicken or properly heating a pan before searing a piece of meat, recipe-less cooking will probably be a loss. And baking, which often requires more precise measurements and temperatures, can be difficult to execute off the cuff.

"I think beginners want and need recipes," he says. "You do have to know some things when you start cooking."

Thomas Griffiths, associate dean at the Culinary Institute of America, says that even his chefs use recipes as a guide. But he teaches formulas that allow them to adapt existing recipes.

"When I teach a cooking class, I leave lots of blank pages for notes," Mr. Griffiths says, "because when you cook a recipe, there is so much gray area. You make a change by experimenting."

Copyright 2008 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit

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TIME: Touring Singapore's Gastromical Heritage

Thursday, Apr. 02, 2009

Touring Singapore's Gastronomical Heritage

By Neel Chowdhury

The irony is both sad and delicious. The Little Nyonya, a Singaporean television serial about a Chinese Peranakan family that concluded in the middle of January, was told entirely in Mandarin, a language whose creeping bid for dominance in Singapore has lately eclipsed Baba Malay — the pidgin Malay at the heart of Peranakan culture. But in a sly act of revenge, the immensely popular serial triggered a boomlet in all things Peranakan — like the batik fabrics Peranakan women used to stitch their sarong kebayas, worn most famously by Singapore Airlines' stewardesses, or the lavender-and-purple-colored porcelain bowls from which they doled out their quivering, jelly-like sweets and spicy laksa soups.

Like laksa — a coconut-milk-and-prawn-laden broth thickened by the spices of China, Malaysia and India — Peranakan culture has been simmering since the Chinese began migrating to the Straits in the early 16th century. Originally small-time traders under the Portuguese colonialists of Malacca, the Chinese Peranakans subsequently parlayed their mastery of Malay and English to become compradore merchants under British rule, spawning a prosperous Anglophile and anglophone class that aspired to attend Oxford and Cambridge but which, at the same time, spoke among itself in Baba Malay. (See 10 things to do in Singapore.)

From the late 19th century onward, when waves of poorer and hungrier Hokkien- and Teochew-speaking immigrants began washing up in Singapore, the dominance of the early Peranakans began to slowly decline. But their culture hasn't vanished, and those who want a glimpse of the Peranakan legacy should begin on foot in the residential Emerald Hill neighborhood of Singapore. The houses that wealthy Peranakan families built there are still adorned with the fretted arches and colorful ornamental tiles they borrowed partly from colonial Portugal. (See pictures of Singapore.)

From Emerald Hill, one can take a bus, underground train or taxi for the short trip to the Bras Basah area. There, inside the premises of an old school, is a new Peranakan Museum, www.peranakanmuseum.sg, located within walking distance of the Singapore River and the pubs and restaurants of Boat Quay. The museum itself — painted in the sun-splashed pastels that have seeped into Peranakan fabrics, craftwork and confectionery — is an airy delight, and its vivid recreations of Peranakan household life a pleasure to explore.

Peranakan influence has retreated from many areas of Singapore life, but its hold over the Singaporean stomach is still strong. Peranakan food can be sampled in the city's thousands of low-cost hawker centers. For connoisseurs, the East Coast neighborhood of Katong is where the best laksa is served — traditionally enjoyed in chipped porcelain bowls while seated on plastic stools on the footpath. (See the top 10 food trends of 2008.)

To sample the truly refined subtleties of Peranakan food and its interplay of influences, head for the Blue Ginger restaurant, tel: (65) 6222 3928, in the city's Tanjong Pagar area. Blue Ginger is known for seafood, and the specialty of the house is shelled crayfish, deep-fried and topped with a cloyingly sweet, caramelized peppercorn sauce. Served with rice, it ought to be accompanied by Chinese water spinach, cooked in a chili-infused shrimp paste known as belachan. For dessert, go for the sago gula melaka, a mixture of boiled sago, warm coconut milk, palm sugar and shaved ice. The cost of an average dinner for two (without alcohol) is around $50, a modest tariff for food that is invariably sedap. That's Baba Malay for "delicious," and a word that will hopefully live for a long time yet.

Find this article at:
http://www.time.com/time/travel/article/0,31542,1888998,00.html

Books: Wartime Kitchen - Food and Eating in Singapore 1942 - 1950

Wartime Kitchen

Food and Eating in Singapore 1942 - 1950

ISBN: 978-981-4217-58-3 (Hardcover)
Text by: Wong Hong Suen
Jointly published by: National Museum of Singapore &  Editions Didier Millet Pte Ltd
Published Year: 2009
Price: S$35 (Before GST)

Wartime Kitchen: Food and Eating in Singapore 1942 - 1950 captures the resilience and adaptability of a people faced with limited resources and shortages during the Japanese Occupation and in post-war Singapore, never before examined in detail. Presenting in-depth research alongside anecdotes, personal reminiscences and a collection of wartime recipes and food-related vignettes, the book vividly documents a crucial decade in Singapore's history with a particular emphasis on eating - an activity famously high in the priorities of Singaporeans. Atmospheric and even nostalgic, the book examines how hunger and the need for food became an impetus for culinary creativity.

Wong Hong Suen specialised in Southeast Asian art history at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University College London. She is the curator of the National Museum’s Food Gallery and the Modern Times (1900-1940s) section of the Singapore History Gallery. Her research interests focus on Southeast Asian and Singapore’s cultural history and include the history of representations, art history and colonial photography.

Source: National Museum of Singapore

WSJ: My Grandmother's Dumpling

FOOD & DRINK
JANUARY 30, 2009, 1:50 A.M. ET

My Grandmother's Dumpling

By AMY MA

There was no denying a dumpling error. If the meat tumbled out of a poorly made one as it cooked, Grandmother could always tell who made it because she had personally assigned each of us a specific folding style at the onset of our dumpling-making education. In our house, a woman's folding style identified her as surely as her fingerprints.

 

Enjoying Dumplings at New Year

3:13

For Amy Ma, the Lunar New Year rings in many warm, family traditions, including dumpling-making.

"From now on, you and only you will fold it in this way," she instructed me in our Taipei kitchen in 1994, the year I turned 13. That is when I had reached a skill level worthy of joining the rest of the women -- 10 in all, from my 80-year-old grandmother, Lu Xiao-fang, to my two middle-aged aunts, my mother and the six children of my generation -- in the folding of jiao zi, or dumplings, for Chinese New Year. Before then, I had been relegated to prep work: mixing the meat filling or cutting the dough and flattening it.

Cousin Mao Mao, the eldest daughter of my grandmother's first son, had been away for four years at college in the U.S. But with casual ease, she fashioned her dumplings in the style of the rat, tucking in the creases and leaving a small tail that pinched together at one end. Two distinct pleats in a fan-shaped dumpling marked the work of Aunt Yee, Mao Mao's mother, who had just become a grandmother herself with the birth of a grandson. A smaller purse-like dumpling with eight folds toward the center was my mother's. Grandmother's dumplings were the simplest of the bunch -- flat, crescent-shaped with no creases and a smooth edge. And as I was the youngest in my generation, she'd thought it appropriate to make my signature design a quirky variation of her own, with an added crimping to create a rippling hua bian, or flower edge.

"A pretty little edge, for a pretty little girl," she said.

Samantha Sin

While dumplings graced our tables year-round, they were a requisite dish during the Lunar New Year holidays. The Spring Festival, as it is known in China -- chun jie -- is arguably the most important celebration of the year: It is a time to be with family, to visit friends and start life anew -- and eat dumplings.

The length of observance varies. Today in Taiwan, the national holiday stretches to nine days -- including two weekends -- with all businesses and government offices closed. In mainland China, officials rearrange the working calendar to give the public seven consecutive days off, while in Hong Kong there are three public holidays and in Singapore, two. Unofficially, many Chinese people consider the traditional period of the first 15 days appropriate to welcome the new year.

The Recipe: Jiao Zi

Samantha Sin

Grandmother's recipe was never put to paper, her ingredients were never measured and cooking times were never recorded. Yet her trained hands and eyes ensured the final product remained consistent year after year. Use the following recipe, inspired by Grandmother's Chinese New Year dumplings, as a starting point for your own dumpling story. Makes 50-80 dumplings:

Dough
375 grams flour (extra for dusting)
1 egg white
180 to 240 milliliters cold water

Filling
2.2 kilograms ground pork (mostly lean, but with some fat)
1/2 medium-size Chinese cabbage (finely chopped)
1 tablespoon ginger (minced)
2 teaspoons garlic (minced)
90 grams scallions (finely chopped)
20 grams chopped cilantro or parsley (finely chopped)
1 egg
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon Chinese Shaoxin cooking wine (or dry Chinese sherry)
1 tablespoon sesame oil
2 teaspoons salt (1 teaspoon for preparing the cabbage, 1 teaspoon for the filling)
1 chicken bullion cube
1/2 teaspoon five-spice powder
1/2 teaspoon white pepper
1/2 teaspoon brown sugar

Dipping Sauce
soy sauce
vinegar
sesame oil
chili paste
minced garlic

• Place the flour in a bowl with the egg white. Slowly add the cold water, mixing with chopsticks in between additions until it starts to pull together to form a dough. Then knead with hands until the surface is shiny and smooth.
• Set the dough aside in a bowl, cover with a damp cloth and let it rest for at least 30 minutes (this allows the dough to relax and become easier to roll out).
• Sprinkle one teaspoon of salt over the chopped Chinese cabbage and mix (this will draw out water from the cabbage). Let it rest for 10 minutes, then squeeze out the excess water with your hands.
• In a large bowl, combine the ground pork, cabbage, ginger, garlic, scallions, cilantro and egg. Add the soy sauce, wine, sesame oil, remaining teaspoon of salt, chicken bullion cube, five-spice powder, white pepper and brown sugar. Mix with chopsticks in a clockwise direction just until all ingredients are incorporated. Do not over-mix.
• Dust the countertop with flour. Cut the dough into quarters and roll one quarter into a thin log (about 2.5 centimeters in diameter). Put the remaining dough back in the bowl and cover with a damp cloth.
• Cut the log of dough into 1.5-centimeter segments and press each segment to form a disk. If needed, dust with more flour.
• Flour the rolling pin to prevent the dough from sticking. Then, using your right hand to operate the rolling pin and your left to rotate the disk of dough, roll out the dough until you have a dumpling skin about eight centimeters in diameter, thinner around the edge than in the center.
• Place about a teaspoon of filling in the center of the dumpling skin.
• Then, using your index finger and thumb, seal the seams firmly; start by pinching once in the center of the seam and then fold from right to center with your right hand and left to center with your left hand.
• Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add dumplings one at a time, making sure not to overcrowd the pot. Do not stir; instead, use a spatula to push the dumplings to prevent sticking. Bring the water to a boil three times (with the pot covered), adding 120 milliliters of cold water each time. When the water comes to a boil a fourth time, the dumplings should be floating and ready to eat.

My family celebrated the first three days of the Spring Festival in a traditional way: Everyone came "home," which meant to my grandfather's house. We were already home -- my father, mother, brother and I lived in Taipei with my father's parents, who had moved from China in the late 1940s. Most of my father's family lived nearby. On chu yi, the first day of the new year, friends came to our house to extend greetings. For chu er, the second day, married women returned to their parents' house. The third day, chu san, was always celebrated united, as a family. And on each of those days, dumplings were the main food served during lunch and dinner. There might be other side dishes -- leftovers from New Year's Eve -- but no other food was prepared from scratch during the holiday. It was considered bad luck to do any work during this time; to ensure a peaceful year ahead, you had to rest and that meant no cooking.

Though it isn't known exactly when dumplings came into being, author and Chinese food expert Fuchsia Dunlop says jiao zi date as far back as 1,100 years ago. "In the city of Turpan, a tomb was uncovered that had boiled dumplings from the Tang dynasty (618-907) preserved in much the same shape with similar fillings as they are today," says Ms. Dunlop.

Many people believe the practice of eating these dumplings on Chinese New Year became popular in the Yuan and Ming dynasties, which stretched from 1271 to 1644, when yuan bao -- gold and silver ingots -- began to take hold as currency in China; the dumplings take the shape of those coins. During new year celebrations, filling your stomach with edible replicas of ingots was thought to ensure a year of prosperity ahead. The packaged bites also celebrated a letting go of the past, since the word "jiao" also means "the end of something."

Traditions have relaxed: Not every family eats only dumplings for three days. They also vary regionally: In the south of China, nian gao, or rice cakes, are often served instead of these dough-swaddled morsels at Chinese New Year. Still, hefty portions of dumplings undoubtedly remain a big attraction this time of year in many Chinese households.

Even now, that initial bite of any dumpling transports me back to our Taipei kitchen: the women packed like sardines working on their craft with a Zen-like rhythm, the flour-dusted countertops, the air redolent with the scent of dough, and the faded brown ceramic tiles on the floor polished smooth by countless footsteps over the years.

The great dumpling cook-off commenced each year following Lunar New Year's Eve dinner, a family meal of Grandmother's best dishes -- sweet soy-braised pork, ru yi cai (10 vegetables tossed together with a soy-sauce vinaigrette), and always steamed fish since its term in Mandarin, "yu," is a homonym for "plenty." By 9 p.m., the plates were cleared and washed, and the women were clustered in the kitchen.

The men, forbidden to enter the cooking area, dispersed to their separate corners to talk politics and play dice or mahjong while awaiting the countdown to midnight. Every room of the house swelled with festivity as the whole family of more than 30 members -- four generations -- gathered for this night in my grandparents' house.

Amid the bustle, the kitchen alone had an air of serenity and purpose as the women worked through the night. Before dawn of the next morning, there would be enough dumplings to cover two large dining room tables and every kitchen countertop.

To start, Grandmother unloaded from the refrigerator the large ball of dough made from flour, cold water and a dash of egg white (her secret ingredient) that she had prepared the day before. Setting it onto the butcher block with her plump and sturdy hands, she ripped off two large balls and rolled each into a log, starting her gentle kneading from the center and stretching out to both sides. The remaining dough she kept covered under a damp towel.

Meanwhile, the rest of the women -- my mother and two aunts and my cousins and me -- picked over bunches of coriander and peeled off the wilted layers of scallions and cabbages. A liberal douse of salt sprinkled over the cabbage drew out the excess water, and the chopped confetti-like bits were hand-squeezed to prevent a watery dumpling filling. The butcher knife rocked repeatedly back and forth on the ginger and garlic until it was almost a paste. Likewise, the vegetables had to be diced as finely as possible so they would be evenly spread through every bite of the final product.

Ignoring the slew of innovative options for fillings popular in contemporary restaurants -- shrimp and chives, shark's fin and vermicelli -- we filled our no-frills dumplings with minced pork. Into the pink ground meat went the chopped speckles of vegetables and herbs along with sesame oil, Shaoxin wine, salt, soy sauce, a pinch of sugar, white pepper, five-spice powder and an egg. Nothing was measured, yet it always tasted the same.

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Amy Ma

To celebrate Lunar New Year, everyone went 'home' to the Taipei house of my grandparents, Ma Ching-rei, left, and Lu Xiao-fang, right, who passed away within months of each other in the late 1990s.

"That's enough mixing," Grandmother cautioned. My mother was using a pair of wooden chopsticks to combine the ingredients in large circular motions. Grandmother insisted on only combing through the filling in one direction -- clockwise -- so as to not over-mix, which would make it tough.

Then like a carefully orchestrated master plan, a natural assembly line formed. First, Grandmother cut off equal-size segments of her log of dough and then passed them to my mother, who used a wooden roller to flatten them into circles, a process called gan mien. Two aunts continued to fashion new dough into logs on one end of the kitchen counter, and three cousins lined up on the other end to begin filling and folding dumplings. The positions would alternate periodically, and makers would move up the line over the years as their skills improved. At 5 years old, my job had been the menial task of pressing the just-cut dough segments into flat disks so they would be easier to roll out, but I had since graduated to a dumpling folder. All together, we women stood, each ready to play her part in this culinary theater.

"Every step requires its own kung fu," Grandmother instructed in Mandarin. She was short, but her chubby silhouette held the solid stance of a symphony conductor. The process was tedious, but a mere mention of serving a frozen dumpling from a supermarket would be confronted with a gaze that screamed: uncultured, unbelievable, un-Chinese. The matriarch in her kitchen was doing more than just cooking; she was training the next generation of wives, daughters and mothers as her mother-in-law had taught her.

"Use your palm to control the roller, not your fingertips," she barked. "Keep a steady rhythm, consistent like your pulse." The dumpling skins weren't flattened in one fell swoop like a pie crust. Each one had to be rolled just around the rim and rotated so that the resulting circle was thinner on the edges than in the center. When folded in half the two sides met, the dumpling skin was uniform in thickness. It was a painstaking task when repeated over the span of many hours, and my mother once showed me her swollen palms after a night of gan mien.

The amount of meat filling had to be just right. Not too much -- "too greedy!" -- and not too little: "too stingy!"

And dumplings had to be folded with both hands. "It's a superstition," Grandmother told us. "Women who fold dumplings with one hand won't have children. Your right and left hand have to work together to be a good mother." Grandmother demonstrated how she used the fleshy part of the index finger and thumb to press together the dough. Fresh dough, unlike frozen dough, didn't need water to seal the seams. Only a firm pinch.

"Beautifully folded," Grandmother commented on the dumpling of the newest granddaughter-in-law, Mei Fang. "But it took you too long to make. What good is a wife who makes lovely dumplings if there's not enough to feed everyone?" Grandmother asked.

The women smirked at the acrid words -- she had been equally harsh to all of them when they first joined the family. Grandmother had taken her lumps, too: After she married grandfather, her mother-in-law had harrassed her on the ways of making a proper dumpling. Now, Grandmother reigned over her kitchen; it was a classroom and crucible we all endured.

"It's better that I am more strict on you girls now," she sighed. "Lest you get criticized by someone else even worse than me." My mother looked over her shoulder to check on me, her only daughter, and smiled when I gave her an assuring nod.

When no one was looking, Grandmother washed a small coin and hid it in one of the dumplings to be discovered by a lucky winner, who was said to be blessed with extra good fortune for the new year. Despite my best efforts, I never chanced upon it.

Working until the early hours of the next morning in the kitchen brought out the juicier stories, ones laced with family secrets, scandals, gossips and tall-tales, all soaked up by my youthful ears.

"Did you hear? Second uncle's daughter got a tattoo."

"So-and-so's sister is really her daughter."

By the time the echoes of popping firecrackers filled the streets signaling the stroke of midnight, hundreds of dumplings, ready for boiling, were lined up on the kitchen sheet pans like tiny soldiers pending a final command.

With only the boiling of the dumplings left to do, the women then took turns cleaning up and bathing, all the while trailing after their children and lulling them to bed. But the majority of the family didn't sleep. The custom of shou sui, or staying up all night to symbolize having unlimited energy for the upcoming year, was usually followed.

Around 5 a.m., the tables were set in preparation for the midmorning dumpling brunch. But there was no counting of bowls or chopsticks. "You're not allowed to count anything during the first day of the year," reminded Grandmother. "If you don't count anything today, then the amount of possessions you have will be countless for next year." So we grabbed chopsticks by the handfuls -- some wooden, some metal, all mixed in a pile -- and laid them on the table alongside stacks of blue and white porcelain bowls and plates.

Before long, the first doorbell rang, and along with it came the boisterous greetings from guests, friends and neighbors. The words gong xi fa cai ("congratulations and be prosperous") were audible even from inside the kitchen, and they drew out the younger girls, who were eager for their hong bao, or red packets. These waxy packets stuffed with money were given by elders to children as a gift, and the youngest in the house could often rack up what seemed to them a small fortune. Their flour-covered fingerprints dotted the envelopes as they calculated the year's gains.

At 9 a.m. or when the guest count reached 10 -- enough to fill a table -- we slid the dumplings into the stainless steel pot, careful not to let the boiling water splatter onto our bare toes, peeking out from house slippers. Grandmother insisted on never stirring the pot, and to ensure the dumplings wouldn't stick together, she slid a spatula through the bubbling broth just once in a pushing motion. Thrice the water came to a boil and each time we added more water. By the fourth time, the dumplings bobbed merrily on the surface. They were done.

Grandmother fished out the broken dumplings before turning to Cousin Jia Yin, often the culprit, in half jest. "Ah...thanks to you, the dumpling soup will be especially tasty this year since you've flavored it with all the filling that busted out." The casualties were fished out and quickly disposed of; broken dumplings are considered bad luck if served. To save Jia Yin's face, her father, grandmother's second son, often said at the table, "Dumplings are great, but my favorite is still the dumpling soup," ladling up another bowl.

Guests and grandparents ate first and the two large tables in the dining room were seated by gender. My grandfather took the head seat at one table with his friends, and my grandmother with hers at the other. After they ate, the tables were reset and the second generation took its turn, with my father and uncles at one table, my mother and aunts at the other. The third and fourth generations had less strict table assignments and took whatever empty chairs opened up -- it could be two or three hours before it was our turn to eat.

Steaming plates were heaped high with dumplings still glistening from their hot-water bath. Diners readied themselves with their own taste-tinkering rituals in concocting the perfect dipping sauce -- a combination of soy sauce, vinegar, minced garlic and sometimes sesame oil or chili paste. Grandmother's special la ba vinegar, marinated with whole garlic cloves, was the most coveted condiment.

Before the first bite, everyone gathered around Grandfather, who made a toast -- usually with tea though sometimes he would sneak in some Chinese wine -- to ring in the new year. Then, he took the first pick of the dumplings -- something of an honor among the women, who held their breath in hopes that his choice of the perfect dumpling would be their own. It would have to have the ideal skin-to-filling ratio, every bite an equal portion of meat and dough, and expert craftsmanship -- a balanced and symmetrical shape with firmly sealed seams.

"This one looks good to me," my grandfather decided, gently lifting the plump parcel with the tips of his chopsticks. It was Grandmother's dumpling, and she stood poker-faced next to him, not revealing her triumph.

She remembered a time when her dumplings were the only ones on the platter. As her family grew, so too did the styles of dumplings until the plate resembled an eclectic family tree, and each doughy pouch carried within it the cross-generational memoirs of its maker. The dumpling ritual slowly faded after Grandmother's passing in 1999; Grandfather died soon after and the family scattered. But every Chinese New Year, I still make dumplings in Grandmother's way, repeating her lessons in my head.

"Eat more! Eat more! There's magic in these dumplings," Grandmother would say. And she meant it truly.

—Amy Ma is a writer based in Hong Kong.

Copyright 2008 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Economist: What's cooking?

See also: Sherman's Lagoon

The American Association for the Advancement of Science

What's cooking?

Feb 19th 2009 | CHICAGO
From The Economist print edition

Mary Evans

The evolutionary role of cookery

YOU are what you eat, or so the saying goes. But Richard Wrangham, of Harvard University, believes that this is true in a more profound sense than the one implied by the old proverb. It is not just you who are what you eat, but the entire human species. And with Homo sapiens, what makes the species unique in Dr Wrangham’s opinion is that its food is so often cooked.

Cooking is a human universal. No society is without it. No one other than a few faddists tries to survive on raw food alone. And the consumption of a cooked meal in the evening, usually in the company of family and friends, is normal in every known society. Moreover, without cooking, the human brain (which consumes 20-25% of the body’s energy) could not keep running. Dr Wrangham thus believes that cooking and humanity are coeval.

In fact, as he outlined to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), in Chicago, he thinks that cooking and other forms of preparing food are humanity’s “killer app”: the evolutionary change that underpins all of the other—and subsequent—changes that have made people such unusual animals.

Humans became human, as it were, with the emergence 1.8m years ago of a species called Homo erectus. This had a skeleton much like modern man’s—a big, brain-filled skull and a narrow pelvis and rib cage, which imply a small abdomen and thus a small gut. Hitherto, the explanation for this shift from the smaller skulls and wider pelvises of man’s apelike ancestors has been a shift from a vegetable-based diet to a meat-based one. Meat has more calories than plant matter, the theory went. A smaller gut could therefore support a larger brain.

Dr Wrangham disagrees. When you do the sums, he argues, raw meat is still insufficient to bridge the gap. He points out that even modern “raw foodists”, members of a town-dwelling, back-to-nature social movement, struggle to maintain their weight—and they have access to animals and plants that have been bred for the table. Pre-agricultural man confined to raw food would have starved.

Firelight

Start cooking, however, and things change radically. Cooking alters food in three important ways. It breaks starch molecules into more digestible fragments. It “denatures” protein molecules, so that their amino-acid chains unfold and digestive enzymes can attack them more easily. And heat physically softens food. That makes it easier to digest, so even though the stuff is no more calorific, the body uses fewer calories dealing with it.

In support of his thesis, Dr Wrangham, who is an anthropologist, has ransacked other fields and come up with an impressive array of material. Cooking increases the share of food digested in the stomach and small intestine, where it can be absorbed, from 50% to 95% according to work done on people fitted for medical reasons with collection bags at the ends of their small intestines. Previous studies had suggested raw food was digested equally well as cooked food because they looked at faeces as being the end product. These, however, have been exposed to the digestive mercies of bacteria in the large intestine, and any residual goodies have been removed from them that way.

Another telling experiment, conducted on rats, did not rely on cooking. Rather the experimenters ground up food pellets and then recompacted them to make them softer. Rats fed on the softer pellets weighed 30% more after 26 weeks than those fed the same weight of standard pellets. The difference was because of the lower cost of digestion. Indeed, Dr Wrangham suspects the main cause of the modern epidemic of obesity is not overeating (which the evidence suggests—in America, at least—is a myth) but the rise of processed foods. These are softer, because that is what people prefer. Indeed, the nerves from the taste buds meet in a part of the brain called the amygdala with nerves that convey information on the softness of food. It is only after these two qualities have been compared that the brain assesses how pleasant a mouthful actually is.

The archaeological evidence for ancient cookery is equivocal. Digs show that both modern humans and Neanderthals controlled fire in a way that almost certainly means they could cook, and did so at least 200,000 years ago. Since the last common ancestor of the two species lived more than 400,000 years ago (see following story) fire-control is probably at least as old as that, for they lived in different parts of the world, and so could not have copied each other.

Older alleged sites of human fires are more susceptible to other interpretations, but they do exist, including ones that go back to the beginning of Homo erectus. And traces of fire are easily wiped out, so the lack of direct evidence for them is no surprise. Instead, Dr Wrangham is relying on a compelling chain of logic. And in doing so he may have cast light not only on what made humanity, but on one of the threats it faces today.

Copyright © 2009 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.

FT: Ode to Abe

Ode to Abe

By Jurek Martin

Published: January 31 2009 00:17 | Last updated: January 31 2009 00:17

A Lincoln
By Ronald C White Jr
Random House $35

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
By Doris Kearns Goodwin
Penguin £10.99
FT Bookshop price: £8.79

Abraham Lincoln
By James M McPherson
OUP $12.95
FT Bookshop price: £10.99

Abraham Lincoln: A Life
By Thomas Keneally
Penguin $14

The Lincoln Anthology
Edited by Harold Holzer
The Library of America $40

The Shadows Rise: Abraham Lincoln and the Ann Rutledge Legend
By John Evangelist Walsh
University of Illinois Press $19.95
FT Bookshop price: £15.99

Writing in 1922, the great American curmudgeon, HL Mencken, reported that a publishing friend had told him only four types of books ever make money: detective novels; bodice-rippers; those about “spiritualism, occultism and other claptrap”; and volumes on Abraham Lincoln. Certainly no American president and few, if any, historical figures, have ever attracted so much serious scholarly attention.

EDITOR’S CHOICE

More from Books - Nov-24

But it is also possible to look at Lincoln in an entirely personal way. President from 1861 to 1865, he was never an Everyman but he means something, even now, to everyone. Approach him through the lens of your own interests and something will resonate back at you from the mid-19th century. That might be harder for nuclear physicists and geeks (though he was a dab hand with early agricultural machinery) but if your passions are, as mine, the strange arts of writing and American politics, then Old Abe is a perfect sounding board.

That was my way of looking at a new clutch of books brought out for the 200th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth on February 12. The anniversary’s timing could not be more appropriate, coming only weeks after the inauguration as 44th president of another gangly, big-eared Illinois lawyer with a gift for oratory.

The books include a biography (Ronald C White); a paperback about his strategy (Doris Kearns Goodwin); two slimmer volumes (an elegant extended essay by Lincoln historian James M McPherson, and one by Thomas Keneally, the Australian novelist); reflections on his first great love affair (John Evangelist Walsh); and a compelling anthology, edited by Harold Holzer. Many more, including a three-volume biography, are en route.

Obviously he is worth it. Only George Washington and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, also forged in crises, are in his league as US presidents. In 1860 he won the election for the new anti-slavery Republican party. He freed the slaves and saved the Union by fighting a civil war that, at times, looked unwinnable. He told his country what he was doing with magnificent clarity, approached only by Winston Churchill and Martin Luther King, which was remarkable for a man with only one year’s formal education. He was also the funniest and pithiest resident of the White House. James McPherson writes that after devoting 50 years to Lincoln, he is forever discovering something new or acquiring fresh perspectives.

His life story, from childhood through to his assassination in 1865 by John Wilkes Booth, is etched in the collective American memory. He taught himself to read and write and was little more than a farm labourer and occasional storekeeper, postman and surveyor before he fell in love with the law and politics. His home state of Illinois was “free” and Lincoln detested slavery but he was pragmatic – he was, after all, a politician seeking election.

It was his oratory that earned his reputation. Two speeches, among the many, stand out: the Gettysburg address in 1863 after the war’s decisive, but not climactic, battle, and the second inaugural address as the war wound down in 1865, just five weeks before his death.

Because I write for a living, I have long been fascinated by Lincoln’s way with words. How could anybody say so much in the Gettysburg address in just 272 words or in his second inaugural, 701 pearls of prose?

The Lincoln Anthology is a treasure trove of what other wordsmiths thought of him. HG Wells rated him one of the six greatest men of all time, along with Jesus, Buddha, Aristotle, Asoka and Roger Bacon: “He seems to me to embody the essential characteristics of America.” Leo Tolstoy tells a wonderful story about chiefs and bandits in the remote Caucuses plugging the author for all he knew about this far away American. He writes: “The greatness of Napoleon, Caesar and Washington was only moonlight by the sun of Lincoln ... He was great through his simplicity and was noble through his charity.”

Even Mencken, never charitable, thought the Gettysburg address sublime: “Eloquence brought to a pellucid and almost child-like perfection.” He could not, of course, resist adding that it was a one-off and based on a false premise. Ibsen and Whitman wrote odes to Lincoln. But none of them addressed the quality of his writing.

Jacques Barzun, a Columbia University professor, did so, however, in a marvellous 1959 essay. Even in his early political pamphlets and court cases, Lincoln showed control over words, says Barzun. A parallel emerged between the shortness of an Aesop fable “and the mania Lincoln had for condensing any matter into the fewest words”.

According to legend, Lincoln scribbled down the Gettysburg address on a train to the event. He did not write fast but he did write a lot. He stuffed his notes in his desk, his pockets and his stove-pipe hat, to be retrieved when needed. When called to speak, all had already been thought through.

Barzun praises Lincoln’s literary art: “[His] precision, vernacular ease, rhythmical virtuosity and elegance may at a century’s remove seem alien to our tastes,” he writes. But out of Lincoln came Mark Twain, and out of Twain came Sherwood Anderson, Mencken and Ernest Hemingway. His legacy endures.

Of the books written for this 200th anniversary, historian White’s biography is the most comprehensive – though not as magisterial as David Herbert Donald’s 1995 tome. Keneally is more partial – as a novelist he focuses on Lincoln’s many angsts more than his achievements. He even asks whether the syphilis he picked up from a prostitute explained Lincoln’s nervousness with women.

McPherson covers all the bases in shorthand, a pocket primer for his own larger works. Doris Kearns Goodwin, the biographer of many presidents, explores the political machinations of Lincoln and those around him. Taken together, these books reach similar conclusions, rounding out the picture of the 16th president.

Each of these volumes illustrate in various ways the literary and political connection. They give a sense of Lincoln’s intellectual self-confidence allied to an extraordinary detachment, the source of his mastery over both words and men. The powerful “team of rivals” he assembled for his wartime cabinet, deliciously explored in Goodwin’s book, probably thought the shambling string bean of a country lawyer a push-over. Goodwin quotes his secretary John Hay: “It is absurd to call him a modest man. No great man was ever modest. It was his intellectual arrogance and unconscious assumption of superiority that men like Chase and Sumner could never forgive.”

Lincoln’s rule was not to bear grudges. His, after all, was no smooth ride to the top – he lost as many elections as he won. The most celebrated fight was for the US senate in 1858 against Stephen Douglas, the “little giant” and fabled orator. The Illinois debates, mostly about slavery, made his reputation, though he lost that race.

Goodwin argues that Lincoln used rivalry to size up the talent. Edwin Stanton, a famous lawyer, humiliated Lincoln in 1854, calling him an “ape” and barring him from assisting him in a trial. Lincoln hung around the court, watched Stanton in action and made him secretary of war in his first cabinet.

This cabinet included two of the three candidates he defeated in the 1860 election. Another member was William Seward, senator from New York, whom Lincoln had beaten to the Republican nomination. Seward was made secretary of state, just as, 148 years later, Barack Obama put Senator Hillary Clinton from New York in charge of foreign policy. (Seward’s later claim to fame was the purchase of Alaska from Russia, known then as Seward’s Folly, which, I suppose, makes last year’s emergence of Sarah Palin on the national political scene Seward’s Revenge.)

Though Lincoln tried to anticipate what his opponents might do next, this didn’t always work beyond the cabinet. As White and Goodwin note, he effectively promised the southern states not to force them to ban slavery – they seceded from the Union anyway. His own military experience was limited to the brief Black Hawk war in Illinois in 1832 – he said he fought more mosquitoes than Indians. But he knew what he wanted: he went through four generals before Ulysses S Grant showed the degree of urgency he demanded. White quotes his cable to his field commander: “What have your horses being doing for exercise that they are so fatigued?”

Lincoln was a master of men and words but not always in his own household, as Walsh notes. The Shadows Rise documents his periods of depression. Walsh recreates Lincoln’s affair with Ann Rutledge, his first love. His moods seem to have been particularly severe after her death – though Walsh concludes that Rutledge died from typhoid, not, as was long supposed, the mortification of being torn between two men whose hands she had accepted.

Much has been made by all biographers of his marriage to Mary Todd, herself prone to mood swings. This at times had its “ice age”, as friends called it, but they had common interests in literature and politics. Marriages, for example in the case of the Clintons, are often held together in such a way. And many great and lesser mortals rule worlds more easily than their own homes.

Lincoln’s homes began with the humble log cabin in Kentucky 200 years ago and ended 56 years later, with an assassin’s bullet, in a theatre half a mile from the most important home in the land. Writing on the 100th anniversary, Tolstoy hoped his birthday “will create an impulse towards righteousness among nations”. This remains our hope today.

Jurek Martin is a former FT Washington bureau chief

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009